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  3. The ten-year battle over baby-milk that has pitted the champions of breast feeding against more than a dozen powerful multinatio

The ten-year battle over baby-milk that has pitted the champions of breast feeding against more than a dozen powerful multinatio

admin2014-09-28  26
问题     The ten-year battle over baby-milk that has pitted the champions of breast feeding against more than a dozen powerful multinational companies will reach its climax next week.
    At a meeting of the World Health Organization, 157 governments will vote on a code backed by consumer groups, churches and health experts — which would prohibit companies from all direct advertising and promotion of baby milk, from issuing samples and gifts to health workers, from using company "nurses", and even from paying sales commission to their staff. Almost certainly, the code will be passed.
    The result, its backers hope, will reverse the trend away from breastfeeding — especially in the Third World, where it is reckoned that more than a million lives could be saved each year if mothers abandoned artificial substitutes.
    66.____________
    In the United States, they argue that a ban on advertising would be contrary to constitutional freedoms — which, they say, includes the "freedom of Commercial speech." But even the companies no longer dispute the medical facts.
    Infant formula — a powered mixture based on cow’s milk — is indisputably inferior to human milk because it lacks the natural antibodies, which protect babies against many common diseases including measles and diarrheas. In Third World countries, where mothers without refrigerators or detergents are diluting the mixture with polluted water, baby milk is a risk to children’s health.
    A leading world paediatrician, Dr. Derrick Jeliffe, estimates that about 10 million cases a year of infants malnutriton and infectious diseases can be attributed to improper bottle-feeding. The companies emphasize that baby milk has an important role for working mothers and for women who cannot breastfeed.
    67.____________
    The poorest are in any case those least able to afford commercial substitutes. For a typical Third World agricultural worker, feeding one child on baby milk requires between 20 and 50 percent of the family budget. The result, often, is that older children go hungry.
    For the companies, baby milk is big business. The Third World market, growing at 15 percent a year, is already worth about 700 million — double the sales in the US. For the poor countries the trade is a multimillion dollar drain on their foreign exchange, and the avoidable child diseases caused by baby milk increase the strains on the health services.
    68.____________
    They have used aggressive marketing throughout the Third World — creating, their critics claim, a "need" which in all but a handful of cases does not exist.
    Advertising is the central target of the Geneva code. It makes no attempt to ban the sale or use of baby milk, or to resist sales to chemists or government-controlled outlets. The companies say the code is therefore unnecessary, because in October 1979 their umbrella organization, the International Council for Food Industries, agreed on a voluntary code which included the adandonment of direct advertising in developing countries.
    Since that date, however, the International Baby Food Action Network claims to have documented more than 1,000 violations of the voluntary code.
    69.____________
    Some companies, including Cow & Gate, support the WHO code. But most of them resist it because it would crack down on these practices. US companies have mounted a powerful lobby, preying on the Reagan administration’s distaste for international regulation. The government is divided; and the US could still vote against the code.
    Above all, the companies fear that the code will apply equally to the lucrative Western market. This is far from certain because the WHO bowing to pressures from some industrialised countries and milk-surplus producers in the Common Market, has presented its code as a recommendation, not a legally-binding regulation.
    70. ____________
    [A] This means that it is up to individual governments whether or not to apply it.
    [B] The companies disclaim responsibilities for the misuse of their products and for their use in dangerous conditions.
    [C] The companies are lobbying strongly against the code because it would virtually eliminate legitimate competition and because it pays no attenion to different countries’ conditions.
    [D] But detailed and international restrictions cannot be the answer. National measures based on a set of internationally agreed general principles is the realistic approach and one which has already been shown to work in countries like Malaysia and Singapore.
    [E] Besides, medical sales workers still do the rounds of hospitals and clinics, leaving piles of booklets, posters and free samples.
    [F] Yet recent research shows that only a minute percentage of mothers are unable to feed their babies, even among the badly under-nourished.
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答案A
解析
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