Bonus points row over milk for babies

The failure of supermarkets to give bonus points to shoppers who purchase baby milk formula has been criticised.

A caller to RTÉ Radio 1's Marian Finucane Show, Ms Nuala Swaine from Dublin, yesterday argued she was being discriminated against because she had chosen not to breast-feed her child. A spokeswoman for the show said a large number of calls had been received in support of Ms Swaine's position.

"The Government has a promotion that breast is best and if you do not breast-feed your baby you will be penalised by not getting your club points," Ms Swaine said.

"I just could not believe that they're actually victimising me because I chose not to breast-feed my baby."

She added that women who could not breast-feed because they were ill or had undergone mastectomy operations were also being discriminated against. Ms Swaine said she shopped in Superquinn but understood the policy not to award bonus points applied in all supermarkets.

Superquinn's marketing director, Mr Eamonn Quinn, said the supermarket was not allowed to give bonus points on baby formula, cigarettes and pharmaceutical items such as headache tablets.

Mr Quinn explained that the policy on infant formula stemmed from a World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendation.

"It's a WHO guideline, which essentially says there should be no promotion of any other baby milk apart from the natural," he said.

"It's been around for a long, long time and it would be wrong for Superquinn to try to break something like that."

Meanwhile, the national breast-feeding co-ordinator attached to the Department of Health, Ms Maureen Fallon, said the policy should be seen as "positive discrimination" in favour of breast-feeding. She said supermarkets were complying with the fact that Ireland had signed up to the European Community's infant formulae and follow-on formulae regulations 1998-2000, following-on from the WHO recommendation. Ms Fallon said she welcomed debate on the matter because the low rate of breast-feeding in the State had created a "public health crisis".

"There are real health risks to bottle feeding and we have to acknowledge those," she said.

She said breast-feeding promoters had no wish to make women who did not breast-feed feel guilty but were keen to counter marketing by milk formula firms.