More Boobies!!

The Ad Council. Have you heard of them? I'm sure you have. Smokey the Bear works for them to prevent forest fighters. Though now retired, Rosie the Riveter supported women in war jobs. And I'm sure we've all seen McGruff the Crime Dog take a bite out of crime!

If you've ever watched a public service announcement (PSA), chances are it was paid for by the Ad Council.

A few years ago, the Ad Council set aside a large portion of their budget to take up the noble cause of breastfeeding awareness. The pictures you see above were part of the original campaign, headed by the US Department of Health and Human Services. Attention-grabbing and informative, health officials everywhere were excited to launch these ads!

However, lurking in dark alleyways were people who didn't approve.

The Infant Formula Industry sent in their lobbyists.

The Ad Council's budget is $35 million per year. Sound like a lot? It's not. That 35 million is the Ad Council's entire operating budget for the year. That is all the money they are allotted for everything they do. Let’s put some perspective on this. In 2005, McDonald's spent $1.5 billion on global marketing. That's not their operating budget. That's just what they spend on marketing their products around the world—in these United States, they spent $765 million. That's why McDonald's commercials are better than, oh... the good nutrition ads. Have you seen those ads? They're stupid. I digress.. Anyway, Nestle, a major distributor of infant formula, spent $561 million on marketing in these United States in 2005.

People with money have power. Formula companies, who are mostly divisions of major pharmaceutical companies (who donate lots of campaign money), have money; the Ad Council does not.

Back to the lobbyists. The formula industry, for unknown reasons, didn't like the idea of women seeing a link between bottle-feeding and diabetes. What did they do? They hired Clayton Yeutter, former Republican Party Chairman, to talk to Tommy Thompson, the then Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (remember, they were in charge of the Breastfeeding campaign). After a few meetings and letters, the Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign went from nipples on inhalers to:

Cute, huh? Not what the Department of Health and Human Services had in mind. Especially after they made the original ads after hiring professional ad agencies who told them positive messages weren't going to work. They needed the shocking images if they wanted to have a positive change. And they were right. During that campaign, despite the changes made, formula industries increased their own marketing budgets. After launching this campaign, the number of women breastfeeding didn't increase. It didn't even stay the same. It went down. Which means formula sales went up.

The formula industry didn't stop this campaign, but they changed it enough to make them happy. So happy that their lobbyist wrote Mr. Tommy Thompson a letter or two expressing his extreme gratitude for taking their interests into consideration.

Political interference much? It’s being investigated because of Richard Carmona's testimony that the Bush administration repeatedly allowed political considerations to interfere with his efforts to promote public health. Remember Richard Carmona? He was the surgeon general who was not reappointed. Because he didn't base his agenda on The White House's agenda. He didn't like the idea of suppressing things like reports on global health and prison health just because they were politically sensitive topics, and the Bush Administration didn't like his inability to be influenced.

And that is pretty much the story of how the Formula Industry successfully annihilated the breastfeeding campaign. You can read more about it here That article even links to the letters of gratitude written to Tommy Thompson.

Big industries are everywhere. They are in your Food Pyramid. They are in your Dietary Guidelines. They are in your medications and your health care and your school lunch programs and your education. And now, they are in your newborn's only source of nutrition. You think your government works for you? They don't. They work for the people who have the most control over them.

The people working for you send recommendations to the government. The government holds meetings to discuss the recommendations before publishing. Major industries send their people into these meetings. Words like "eat less red meat" are changed to "choose foods low in saturated fat" in your dietary guidelines because the Agriculture Industry has a lot of money and doesn't want people to know that eating a lot of cattle is bad for them. Things affecting you get changed and you never even know because you never see the original ideas. And major industries like it that way.

Steal the control from major industries! Vote for congress representatives who will represent you and your community! Write to officials and get others to write as well! Be your own lobbyist!



My other Boobies!! post can be found here.