[IN HIS recent article in Workers! Socialist Review…]

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IN HIS recent article in Workers! Socialist Review ('Capitalist Crisis and Socialist Alternative'), Bob Sutcliffe drew attention to the fact that while much of the world starves, the US government spends billions to encourage farmers not to plant food crops and the European Economic Community spends seven billion dollars a year to accumulate unsold food for the Common Agricultural Policy.

The point Bob was making is that the only reason for famine is the anarchic system of production solely for profit. Malnutrition exists because it is not profitable to sell food.

Last year, the World Health Organisation illustrated the corollary of this point - malnutrition as a result of the profit to be made from selling the wrong sort of food:

In some parts of the world, the classical dever- -11----1 opment of malnutrition is related to weaning. By breast-feeding their babies for as long as two years, mothers are able to provide them with a reasonable intake of proteins and calories, despite their own marginal food supply. Under these conditions of food shortage, breast feeding also acts as an imperfect, but useful, contraceptive.

Malnutrition

After about two years, the next baby comes along and the two year old is weaned onto a diet often catastrophically low in calories and protein, and prepared under insanitary conditions. The result is kwashiorkor,, the major form of malnutrition. In Swahili the word means disease associate with the new baby.

In thè last ten to fifteen roare there has been an alarming chance in the age at which kwashiorkor occurs, towards younger and younger children. As long ago as 1970, two American nutritionists called Jelliffe pointed out that this was due to earlier weaning, itself reflecting the difficulties in continuing to breastfeed in urban employment.

More important, though, was the influence of 'sociocultural pressures generated by imitation of 'economic superiors' , as well as local unethical and inappropriate advertising by milk firms...

Translated into English, this says that poorly nourished mothers are impressed by the claims of the baby milk manufacturers that their milk formulas give healthy, smiling babies, especially when they compare their own marginally nourished children with bottle-fed babies from well-to-do loften white) families.

Under advertising pressure, and encouraged by free samples, they scrape together sufficient cash to buy a bottle and an initial supply of powdered milk. But not enough.

One study estimated that in Singapore alone, the decline in breast feeding between 1960 and 1970 would have needed the purchase of $1.8 million of powdered milk each year to make up for the nutritional loss. And another researcher found that the purchase of sufficient baby milk to give growth comparable to that of breast-fed babies would take as much as 50% of the total family earnings in some countries.

War on Want describes families spending their entire weekly income to buy a bottle for the baby, without having anything to THAT WAS ALL PRE-Ben WELL OF COURSE:

SCIENCE YOU KI put in it. The consequences are predictable and horrible.

After the initial purchase (typically of the most widely advertised, and hence the most expensive, milk) the mother cannot afford more. The supply soon runs out, but not before her own breast milk has dried up through lack of stimulation.

Even while the powdered milk lasts, lack of understanding of its preparation and inadequate supplies of clean water result in the feeding • of contaminated milk. First the baby gets a heavy dose of bacteria, then it starves.

In response to pressures from the famine-relief charities, who boycotted those firms they considered to be acting unethically, the milk manufacturers agreed in October 1979 to stop promoting their products aggressively in countries where lack of education and

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Sôcialist Organiser no.70. January 28, 1982 Page 13