Suzette's Parenting and Breastfeeding Blog | More reasons to breastfeed

The recent milk issue in China (now becoming international) is actually not new, from 2 angles.

“China Made Products = Poor Quality” Is Not New
First, there have been many China made products that are questionable of its quality lately. Unethical manufacturers tend to use harmful chemicals just to ensure better profits. From last year’s recall of Thomas train toys to ‘date-rape-water’ in award winning toy Aqua Dots, and now it is infants milk. Nothing new. They never learn the proper and ethical way to earn their profits.

Milk Contamination Is Not A New Issue
Even 2 years ago, my colleague was already worried about milk problems in China. Apparently there were already cases of ‘fake milk’ (or more accurately ‘contaminated milk’) saturating the market. Parents were more worried than anyone else, because milk is the main staple food for young babies.

Issues of contamination is not new. Long time ago, we faced heavy metal contaminations, and now we face a different chemical: melamine.

WHAT IS DIFFERENT THEN?
At least in the past, contaminations are unintentional, although yet very often occured. It can come from the food and the water that the cows are fed. It can also come from water that is used to process the milk, additives to fortify the nutrients, etc. What do you think make up of the extra alphabets AHA, DHA, etc? These are chemicals that are not naturally found in cow’s milk. These are things that milk company try to COPY from human mother’s milk. In the process of adding these extra benefits, it can easily get contaminated too.

And in the recent case in China, it is not just mere contamination. Melamine is added intentionally by unethical farmers/producers (not necessarily the manufacturers as they might be victim of this as well).

What is Melamine?
Quoting from here in CNN, melamine is commonly used in coatings and laminates, wood adhesives, fabric coatings, ceiling tiles and flame retardants. It is a byproduct of plastic manufacturing, added to cow’s milk to mimic high-protein texture, in order to pass quality check. It is also the same culprit which killed thousands of US dogs and cats last year, product from China as well.

According to health experts, high level of melamine can cause kidney stones, urinary tract ulcers, and eye and skin irritations.

Okay, let’s look at this: they added melamine in order to pass quality check from their buyers (presuming bigger milk powder manufacturers or diary companies). What does it mean to us? That means, the originally untreated cow’s milk have very poor quality, perhaps looking very dilluted (watery), like human mother’s foremilk?

Looking at this, my conclusion is that: there are 2 additional stronger reasons why mothers should give their breastmilk to their babies.

Mothers Milk Is Less Contaminated
The only way to contaminate mother’s milk is to poison the mother’s diet, and/or to contaminate the expressed milk (provided you have access to it). There is no need to additives, no need for manufacturing process, etc. If you breastfeed directly, it is even safer, as there is no 3rd party in between (like breast pump, bottles, etc).

Mothers Milk Has Better Quality and Is Natural
From what we saw in China’s case, cow’s milk has poor quality especially in protein content. Manufacturers have to copy human breastmilk’s content by adding lots of additives. Why paying so much for a lower quality product, when you can produce it FOC and with better quality naturally?

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