Racial capitalism and the US formula shortage: A policy analysis of the formula industry as a neocolonial system

Cecília Tomori; Aunchalee E L Palmquist

doi:10.3389/fsoc.2022.961200

Racial capitalism and the US formula shortage: A policy analysis of the formula industry as a neocolonial system

Front Sociol. 2022 Oct 26:7:961200. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2022.961200. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Cecília Tomori¹, Aunchalee E L Palmquist^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States.
² Department of Maternal and Child Health, Gillings School of Global Public Health, Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States.
³ Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States.

Abstract

The U.S. is currently experiencing a formula shortage and an infant feeding crisis that began with a formula recall and the hospitalization of 4 infants, 2 of whom died. Since 1981, governments around the world have been calling for an end to blatant human rights violations made by the commercial milk formula (CMF) industry. These practices not only involve targeting nutritionally vulnerable populations of mothers and newborns to turn a profit, but also actively undermining the implementation of policies, legislation, and regulatory oversight that might compromise their accumulation of wealth. In this paper we analyze the 2022 formula-shortage-as-infant-feeding-crisis through the lens of the history of colonialism and critical theory in the anthropology of reproduction. First, we provide an overview of the colonial roots of the formula industry from a global perspective. We then focus on how the mechanisms of racial exploitation remain entrenched in the U.S. approach to infant feeding policies, regulation and investment, setting the stage for the current infant feeding crisis. Through our analysis of the 2022 infant feeding crisis we demonstrate how the multinational CMF industry perpetuates racial capitalism and racialized health inequities and disparities through its operations as a neocolonial enterprise. Finally, we offer policy interventions and potential solutions that are grounded in structural interventions for more equitable, anticolonial, antiracist infant feeding systems.

Keywords: breastfeeding; colonialism; formula industry; infant and young child feeding in emergencies (IYCF-E); infant feeding policy; multinational corporations (MNC); neocolonialism; racial capitalism.