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The Fiji government has passed a new law protecting consumers from vendors offering ‘freebies’ and ‘giveaways’ to lure customers to buy their products.
Under the new Market Controls (Foods for Infants and Young) Regulations 2010, shops and distributors of infant and young children’s food, including milk, found using these unethical methods could face fines and penalties.
Consumer Council of Fiji CEO Premila Kumar said they would be vigorously enforcing the new law and any breaches will be reported by the Council to the Health Ministry.
Kumar said prominent distributors of children’s food in Fiji were violating the International Code of Marketing of Breast milk by offering free giveaways so that consumers would by formulated milk products from them.
“One local distributor was giving away baby powder, cream and lotions wrapped around tins of formula milk, while another distributor gave out free feeding bottles which were wrapped around tins of their brand of formula milk,” Kumar said.
She said they have written to the offending outlets and the free gifts have been removed from the products.
Kumar added their market surveillance teams have also discovered some distributors employing "nutrition specialists" who visit health clinics and talk to mothers about their brands of formula milk.
Kumar said under the new law, these methods would also attract fines and penalties for offending parties.
She said it was unfortunate to see that breast feeding by nursing mothers was on the decline in Fiji due to the availability of baby feeding products in the market.
“Breast milk contains all a baby needs for healthy growth and nutrition - proteins, vitamins, iron, calcium, and a thousand other substances that have not been discovered yet.”
