The Baby Killer revisited

It is nearly fifty years since the charity War On Want published its landmark report “The Baby Killer” (Muller, 1974). It exposed the shocking problems being caused across the world by “the promotion and sale of powdered baby milks,” which were pulling women away from breastfeeding to lethal effect. The reaction was dramatic and determined: at a grassroots level there was a global boycott of products made by the biggest culprit, the food giant Nestle; and upstream, the World Health Assembly (WHA), a United Nations body made up of representatives from nearly 200 countries, developed the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes (WHO 1981) which required companies to acknowledge the superiority of breast milk, and outlawed any advertising or promotion of what are now called breast milk substitutes (BMS).