Guest essay by Eric Worrall
An infant feeding specialist has called for curbs on the availability and use of baby formula, because of high CO2 emissions associated with its production.
Call to curb baby formula emissions
By AAP 3:31am Dec 4, 2019
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Dr Julie Smith, who has studied the economics of infant feeding for over 20 years, says greenhouse gas emissions caused by milk formula production have contributed to global environmental damage.
“The last decade has seen a global boom in formula feeding but this takes the world backwards in the face of contemporary global environmental and population health challenges,” the Australian National University researcher said on Wednesday.
In a paper published in the International Breastfeeding Journal, Dr Smith argued much of the increase in emissions from formula manufacturing can be linked to the expanding toddler milk product market.
She said the products were not only harmful for the environment, but the World Health Organisation has deemed it unnecessary and potentially harmful for children.
“We have got to reduce the manufacture and use of milk formula,” Dr Smith said.
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Read more: https://www.9news.com.au/national/call-to-curb-baby-formula-emissions/11cd81c4-e47d-45dc-888d-c4d95e8917e7
Dr. Smith’s call for reduced production of baby formula will likely be well received by climate activists, who frequently describe babies as a burden on the planet and a threat to global climate stability.
For the last 10 years, I have been part of a mission project to raise $ to buy infant formula for babies who are born HIV negative, but the mothers are HIV positive in an area of SE Zambia. Without this formula, the babies would either likely contract HIV or die of starvation. Our team makes items to sell. We send $1500 / month to Scottish missionaries who buy and distribute the formula, which feeds about 40-60 babies depending on the price of the formula. The missionaries say that this project has saved the lives of at least 500 babies .
I am astonished by the sheer ignorance and arrogance of this proposal!!
thats a generous and useful reason to use it. probably the best Ive read. and those babies might benefit well above the avg by getting some nutrition they wouldnt via a malnourished african mums HIV or not.
Back when I was a university student in the late 1970’s, there was a push to reduce or eliminate baby formula, but back then it was an attack on the Big Evil Corporations(TM) producing formula. This sounds like the same idea with a global warming twist. The more things change…
From the article: “Dr Julie Smith, who has studied the economics of infant feeding for over 20 years, says greenhouse gas emissions caused by milk formula production have contributed to global environmental damage.”
Of course, there is no evidence that greenhouse gas emissions are causing global environmental damage, so therefore, there is no evidence that milk formula production is causing global environmental damage.
The doctor is blowing smoke. Someone ought to call her on it. Where’s your evidence this claim, Doctor?
She has studied the economics for 20 years: this does not give her any climate science credentials.
The Green’s Killing Fields are no less deadly or real than Pol Pots’ Khmer Rouge Red Killing Fields.
Articles like this one always lead me to wonder.
As with “Ban DiHydrogen MonOxide” would these experts also sign a petition to Ban Plant Life?
For Plants are truly evil,they not only consume the demon gas CO2,but then they have the audacity to outgas that same “pollution” at night.
So as we enter the season of Winter in the Northern Hemisphere the nights are long and the days short..Therefor by “Cult Logic” the bad outweighs the good.
Death to the Trees?
As I have noted before,there is something truly perverse when a Carbon Based Life-form calls their basic constituent poison.
Do you really need to ask?
In Switzerland – In 2008, a judge ruled plants have feelings . . . . I wish I was joking.
At the end of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six – he indulges his fantasy of leaving a bunch of eco-terrorists deep in the amazon with nothing. Not even the clothes on their backs, so they could “be one with nature”.
The 60s called, they want their “reduce the population or we’re all going to die” variations on a meme back.
Absolutely rhymes with what Eric said,
It is chilling in my opinion that young feminists are telling ‘we’ should not have kids at all. I think it is getting worse than it was in the 60’s.
Send us the money now, or the babies won’t get their formula!
Just as an aside nicholas, supermarkets here in Sydney (Australia) had to put a limit of two tins per person. Chinese individuals were buying up entire stocks to send back to China. I think we have since created a market for them but it was tough on the locals for some time there.
AH! Now I understand why some democ-rat recently called for the culling of babies.Why,it’s enough to warrant illuminating NY skyline in warm pink glow.
Problem solved!…
In the old days women who could not feed their babies saw them die. Or if upper class, hire a wet nurse so someone else’s baby suffered. Population was well under control.
Doctors don’t have anyone’s better interests at heart. They’ll knock you off sooner if you put your trust in them, just look at cancer treatment!
Recently in NZ someone came out with the same rubbish: that supplementation with formulas was not necessary. This was reported in media.
We have a wonderful mother-baby support organisation in NZ called Plunket. It goes so far back in our history that I attended almost 70 years ago. At that time it was entirely a private initiative.
Anyway, someone high up in Plunket responded to the above opinion in a very serious manner saying that it was a very dangerous and ill-informed. No one messes with the official view of Plunket. For once media took appropriate responsibility and reported it all in a subjective manner.
I would say that authors of such serious fake views should be legally libel. I have come to the conclusion that the only effective response to woke views is the word NO! – we don’t accept your views! It is impossible to reason with these people.
Cheers
M
Well said Michael Carter,
I get so fed up with every news item focusing on GHG emissions and peoples carbon footprints .
New Zealand milk has the lowest emissions profile in the world and if it was exported to Ireland which has the next lowest profile it would still have be the lowest after shipping halfway round the world .
Infant formula exports to China are an important export for our dairy industry .
Our stupid government thinks that cows are bad because they emit methane .
I made a submission on the crazy Zero Carbon Bill at a Select Committee hearing and looked the list MPs straight in their eyes and said
“Biogenic methane is not a problem.
All forage eaten by farmed animals has absorbed CO2 from the air and the minor amount of methane that they emit is broken down in a few years into CO2 and water vapour .Not one atom or molecule of carbon is added to the atmosphere,The process is a cycle . ”
They did not want to know and they have since proceeded to pass the Bill.
Graham Anderson
Proud to be a farmer helping feed the world [ including infants }
Graham –
The whole methane mania in NZ is a farce in my opinion. Look at all the wetlands in NZ prior to agricultural development: Northland, Waikato and Hauraki and West Coast peat swamps, Southland, and many I may have missed. How much methane was emitted from these in their natural state? These things can be calculated but no – they are ignored.
If they replace baby formula with cow’s milk, what about all the methane emissions from cow flatulence?
I wonder whether babies can be nourished with almond milk…
Infant formula is not necessarily based on powdered milk.
Fresh cows milk with water added to reduce protein %, and lactose added to compensate , was the standard formula for decades.
It’s become quite clear that the real problem of CO2 emissions is the tragic impact it has on a sub-set of humans.
A substantial fraction of humans apparently loses several points in IQ with every ppmv increase in atmospheric CO2.
Those unfortunates with IQ marginally adequate for their professions become vocationally inept if not outright foolish. Dr Julie Smith clearly suffers from this deficiency.
There doesn’t seem to be any notion of alarm that is too fatuous to blame on atmospheric CO2.
Apparently manufacturing baby formula now causes walruses to throw themselves off cliffs, bush fires to run wild in Australia, and desperation-driven polar bears to leap onto the backs of baby beluga whales.
The most tragic thing is that these people are so traumatized by the drumbeat of CO2 alarm that they have no idea how benighted they are. CO2-induced psycho-inanity.
One shudders to think of the psycho-ecological impact of doubled CO2, when a mere 40% increase has caused such widespread neuro-suppression.
Let us be honest here: For some of these people, the slide down into abject mental retardation was a short trip indeed.
I guess we just have to do every little thing we can to stay within the remaining carbon budget.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/11/08/remainingcarbonbudget/
Dr. Julie Smith is a bit of an anti-formula activist. Perhaps no one has been listening to her lately, so she thought to bring climate change into the game (“Perhaps those lazy, selfish mothers will pay attention now”).
But really, how much co2 emissions can she attribute to formula production? Formula consumption is about 3 million tonnes annually. The main ingredients are cow’s milk whey, vegetable oils and lactose (presumably also from cow’s milk), plus minor ingredients like vitamins and minerals. Assuming that formula contains 75 percent of milk solids and that cow’s milk has 10% solids, formula would account for about 22 million tonnes of whole milk, which is about 3.5 percent of global milk production. If we assume that formula contains 25% vegetable oil, that represents 750,000 tonnes of vegetable oil, or 0.37 percent of global production.
So 3.5 percent of global milk production and 0.37 percent of global vegetable oil production. I can’t estimate CO2 emissions without a lot more fact-digging, but this doesn’t sound like CO2 from infant formula production is going to be a major player in the greenhouse gas sweepstakes.
IOW it’s just the same guilt trip that’s been laid on to mothers for decades now, if they have a bit of difficulty making enough milk for their babies, with a fashionable climate change message to make it sound serious.
We had four kids. My poor spouse, despite a relatively generous mammary development, never seemed to be able to make enough milk to satisfy a hungry baby. The first two, we struggled for a few months and eventually gave up breast feeding and went to all formula, and numbers 3 and 4 got formula from the start. So yes, you could say we’re in favour of formula. Anyone wishing to give their babies breast milk is welcome to do so, but please don’t try to make us feel guilty for using formula. It won’t work.
Did Julie Smith’s mother have any children that lived?
That cow is decidedly worse than Mikey Bloomberg, who forbade women giving their newborns any kind of infant formula when he was Maire of New Yawk. That isn’t the only stupid thing he did, but he is one meddling son of a witch. And Ms. Smith? If she’s that desperate for grants money that she has to make up some stupid excuse to publish baloney, she should start working in a deli. She might learn something. Not sure what, but – well, never mind.
Babies ARE a burden on the planet. Overpopulation, much?
Dr Julie Smith should apply to (her/him/third gender/other) self what is written on this banner :
https://wmbriggs.com/post/28466/
Baby Doomers.
+1
Article:
8-| Apparently people who have studied something for 20 years may be totally overestimating the significance of their own field.
The baby formula is not the thing. Nor the babies themselves, for that matter. If we want to reduce emissions (which I don’t find something that needs to be exaggerated), build nuclear.
How utterly ridiculous.
Without formula milk, how on earth will you fatten up babies ready for eating?
It seems she didn’t read Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal.
Mrs Julie Smith is a ‘useful idiot’.
I’ve said it before: ‘baby formula milk’ is produced by big multinationals such as Nestle. That is a successful capitalist enterprise. It is therefore the enemy and must be attacked to be destroyed. Hence their products will be declared as ‘damaging’ the climate or the environment.
This naive ‘researcher’ does the bidding for the marxist wreckers of our economies.
As far as I’m aware, Soya Bean products are the go to ingredient that enables the protein level of formula to be padded up to the point where it may be claimed to be superior to mothers milk ?
If thats the case, and taking into account the magic of photosynthesis, wouldn’t formula be quite the opposite of what this Dr lady is claiming ?
Maybe she’d be on firmer ground highlighting the dangers of Soy phytoestrogens and their effects on hormonal development, and the possible link between formula use and the plague of nut allergy cases that seem a newish addition to our modern life 🙂
The amazing thing to me is that one can have a 20 year career studying the “economics of infant feeding.”
Pretty snacky stuff when you’re sucking on the public teat yourself.