All Things Food

[wow_happens28]

Deep State Investing and The Commodification of Our Children

Alcohol abuse damage to adults takes normally 20 years to show damage to the liver and pancreas. What if little infants drank alcohol until adulthood?
What affect will GMO contamination, recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBST), MSG, sugar, and other contaminants in U.S. and/or international infant and follow-up formulas including cupric sulfate[2] ,a known herbicide, fungicide, and pesticide, have on children when grown up? Autism is one already blames on GMO's by some. THOSE POOR LITTLE BABIES BEING USED FOR BIG COMPANIES TO MAKE MONEY FEEDING THEM CHEMICALS? OMG OMG OMG, and with help from or NWO government, no less?

http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/deep-state-investing-and-commodification-our-children

Feeding babies is Big Business – Deep-State style.

The essence of the Deep State is "a combination of government and private businesses, working arm in arm to take advantage of the public."[1]

Here, that public is "mother and child." Where infant and follow-up formula (FUF) are concerned, whether purchasing, consuming, or investing in that increasingly lucrative market, the question for the health and health-freedom advocate is,

"Whether in the financial market or the supermarket, do your purchases represent your ethics, beliefs, and principles or do they satisfy a less noble demand?"

Consumers drive markets. You hold an exquisite balance of power to move markets by boycotting products lacking integrity and demanding what you want and deserve. Are you taking on the Deep State by flexing intelligently based consumer power? The National Health Federation (NHF) completed another year of work in the Codex Committee for Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses, going head to head with the Deep State in Codex's electronic and physical Working Groups. It is despicable how the Deep State drives infant formula and FUF; how it impacts every segment of certain formula markets. It is certainly not supportive of children or their mothers.

Demand Due Diligence
Strangely, in light of GMO contamination, recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBST), MSG, sugar, and other contaminants in U.S. and/or international infant and follow-up formulas including cupric sulfate[2] (a known herbicide, fungicide, and pesticide), key private investment advisor Porter Stanberry plugs the Mead Johnson ticker[3] to potential investors, stating that "Enfamil and other Mead Johnson brands already have a reputation for uncompromised quality." (emphasis added)

Does the term, "due diligence"[4] ring a bell – the care that a reasonable person would exercise to avoid harm to one's (or others') persons or property? Stansberry clearly failed to do due diligence to support the "uncompromised quality" label claim he pitched to potential investors who hopefully do theirs. Depending where an investor, consumer, or referring doctor's mores lay determines if Stansberry's quality claim was researched with healthy skepticism as part of due diligence. Note Stansberry's expansion on his already wild claim for "uncompromised quality" while leveraging the power in the marketplace of doctor-referred brands: "But when doctors actively dissuade moms from "shopping around," it provides some additional width to an already wide competitive moat."[5]

These statements, to the critical thinker,[6] reflect Deep State implications: Doctors, manufacturers, and governments coalescing to take advantage of the trust many parents place in their pediatrician's feeding recommendation. The product is also expensive, if purchased, adding perceived value when its label reads more like a witch's brew. Moreover, it is underwritten by the U.S. Government in entitlement programs and is the Number-1, pediatrician-recommended formula despite the unpronounceable, dangerous ingredients – proving that recommending physicians do not do their own due diligence either. Just google some of the ingredients on the Enfamil and Similac labels yourself. This is a perfect example of the Deep State in action. Can you ethically support this investment either financially or as a consumer?

This "#1 choice of pediatricians," infant formula, Enfamil, contained GMOs as recently as October 2015. Even now, only these two Mead Johnson products (for infants and children up to 12 months), discontinued GMOs,[7] children over 12 months get GMO-contaminated formula. Parenting challenges us to unleash our inner activist, take control, research, and reach the critical decision as to what children will eat and how the health of mother and child will be impacted. Otherwise, innocent children are prostituted simply to make a market; their health and the health of the mother sacrificed on the altar of an investor's portfolio, a bottom line benefitting doctors, manufacturers, and investors. America-based Mead Johnson clearly has other interests to feed at home and abroad and it apparently is not the good health and well-being of children as evidenced by the ghastly industrialized ingredient list.

[BEN, This quote goes in a set-out box: "We cannot waste our precious children. Not another one, not another day. It is long past time for us to act on their behalf." - Nelson Mandela and Graça Machel in their letter to the people of the World, May 2000

Ethical Investing versus Colluding with Deep State
How did this particular Deep State activity begin? Mead Johnson, founder of Johnson and Johnson, needed a solution. In 1888, he enlisted the help of Dr. Abraham Jacobi, the "father of pediatric medicine" to develop a formula to feed his failure-to-thrive son. A thousands-year-old respected profession of wet-nursing went into decline when Jacobi and Mead's formula came to market even though it was based on potato starch. Later, the government facilitated distribution with entitlement programs. Remember, the essence of the Deep State is "a combination of government and private businesses, working arm in arm to take advantage of the public;"[8]in this case, innocent children.

Today, Mead Johnson controls about 40% of the U.S. infant-formula market, according to Stansberry's December 2015 Investment Advisory,[9] and is supported significantly by State and Federal entitlement programs that buy its products. Abbott Labs' Similac controls another 40% of the market. Some of their products' ingredient lists begin with sugar and GMO ingredients. Similac is also supported in part by government entitlement programs. 76% of Mead Johnson's company revenues are outside the U.S. with China in the lead.

Porter recommends putting Mead Johnson on your watch list as revenues grew 10% in 2014 and volumes and revenues are up again this year, between 5% and 7%. Further he states,

"We truly consider Mead Johnson one of the best consumer products businesses in the world,"

and he goes on to detail return on investment capital, return on equity, gross margins, earnings, and more. It's a winner, right? As an investment advisor and in Stansberry's defense, yes it is. But, ethically, to health and health-freedom activists, advocates, and consumers, no one wins in this losing trade. Our future depends on healthy, sound children growing into healthy, sound adults.

The question remains, "Where do you draw the line when investment opportunities profit some and hurt or damage others, particularly in such primary and vital areas as food and health?" We must determine our own ethics of investing, whether in the financial markets or at the supermarket. For many of us, ethical consideration begins by investing in mothers' nutrition and education for successful pregnancy and breastfeeding, which is supported at home, in the workplace, and in society. Some marketing tactics of formula-makers include the caution regarding "low DHA and Vitamin D in breast milk," as if their formula was the solution. Tricking mothers into believing formula is superior because their milk might be deficient is inappropriate since any deficiency that might be present is easily corrected with targeted nutritional supplementation, not turning to formula supplementation.

NHF Faces the Deep State at Codex
The National Health Federation (NHF) has faithfully shown what goes on behind the closed conference room doors at Codex and throughout the year in electronic working groups coordinated around the Globe.

Because of NHF's direct involvement as food activists helping to shape food standards at Codex Alimentarius, we help to shape policy in the global infant and follow-up formula market and many others. Whether fighting against misleading, illicit marketing methods or substandard nutrition, dangerous additives, contaminants, hormones, and GMOs inherent in many of these products, NHF takes on the Deep State internationally for you and your loved ones.

We began years ago working in the Codex Committee for Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) of which Follow-up formula is a part. Children and their mothers, their health both protected by breastfeeding, is compromised – even directly challenged – in the marketplace and by their own pediatricians and investment advisors who recommend FUF. Sadder still are parents who continue, despite living in the "information age," to avoid taking full responsibility for feeding decisions for their children, trusting label claims and pediatrician's recommendations.

Arguing at Codex, the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) said that,

"The adoption of the Follow-on Formula standard in 1987 is universally acknowledged by health advocates as a mistake that has been used to establish and expand a market for unnecessary risky products to the detriment of child health."

Of the many hundreds of country and industry delegates at Codex, there is majority agreement that FUF is unnecessary. Potentially misleading marketing can confuse parents due to the age of introduction on FUF labels that may suggest replacement of breast milk with these products. The "industrialized" product is completely unsatisfactory for health when weaning to indigenous foods has historically been the way children progress. NHF, along with others at Codex, has been the guardian of the health of those who cannot speak for themselves.

NHF President and General Counsel, Scott C. Tips is a veteran. In 2009, it was Scott who kicked the clod of dirt that became an avalanche and stopped a melamine exemption in dry infant formula from advancing after the production and sale of melamine-adulterated milk that killed at least six children, made almost 300,000 sick, and hospitalized more than 54,000 infants with kidney problems in 2008. In our view, the safety of thousands of babies had been sacrificed for monetary gain through the sale of dangerous product. NHF fought melamine's continued use as a lining material where it could still leach into infant formula without limit.