Baby Feeding Law Group-UK achievements in 2020

2020 was a challenging year; nonetheless we continued working towards our objectives, undertaking the following activities:

We retained a membership of 28 organisations and managed two meetings during the year, during which the focus was on responding to infant feeding issues related to COVID-19.

We have grown our twitter followers from 326 in 2019 to 627 (as of 10/02/2021). Those people following and supporting our work include other civil society organisations and groups, health care professionals, NGOs, academics, peer supporters, mothers, civil servants, journalists and politicians.

We met with the nutrition regulators at the DHSC in February (before COVID-19 dominated everyone’s agendas) and highlighted, amongst other matters: companies marketing growing up milks with labels suggesting they meet regulations; similarity of packaging on infant formula, follow on formula and infant milks marketed as FSMPs; and an infant formula available on the UK that did not meet labelling regs.
Many members provided expert input for the development of guidance on safe and appropriate infant feeding in the context of COVID-19; e.g. Resource for Local Authorities on infant feeding support from BFI, First Steps Nutrition Trust and NIFN https://www.unicef.org.uk/babyfriendly/local-authorities-guide/
We had representatives attend the two meetings of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Infant Feeding and Inequalities that took place on March the 10th and October the 22nd.
We wrote several letters to challenge instances of formula advertising and lack of compliance with the Code.
We undertook a UK-wide monitoring exercise in October, which involved taking a snap shot of how and in what forms infant milk marketing reaches the public and health care professionals. First Steps Nutrition Trust analysed the data on online marketing and produced a report highlighting its pervasiveness which prompted Alison Thewliss, MP to call for a ban on online marketing of infant formula.

We eagerly await the updated Guidance Notes from DHSC to accompany the regs which changed in February 2020
We plan to consolidate the findings from our monitoring exercise to call for meaningful regulatory change in relation to the marketing of infant milks, including pursuing our call for a ban on all online marketing.
We will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Code!