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About this episode

* Nestle o WHO believe that if you reverse the downward trend in breast feeding you could save 1.5 million children's lives a year o Nestle haven't been labelling their baby milk products properly o They manage to print the labels in 3 languages in Switzerland but not in South Africa o Mark got invited out to an international conference of News gatherers and investigative journalists, The News World Conference in Barcelona on 5th November 1999 o Asked to give a keynote speech! o 250 journalists in the room so lets use them, so Mark phones Hans-Jorg Renk, the assistant vice-president, Press & Information, Nestle S.A. on speakerphone to ask a few questions. o He wouldn't talk to him so Mark passed the phone over to someone else. Tony Donovan, director of television & visual, Reuters. o He says he can't improvise answers so he gets passed on to Richard Sambrook, head of news gathering, BBC. o And a few others o Mr Renk isn't having a good time * GM baby milk o Found a patent application by PPL, linked to the Roslin Institute who gave us Dolly the Sheep o The patent is for a genetically modified cow that will produce the human proteins in human breast milk. o Think Nestle must be involved, they can only be wanting to make powdered milk products for this. o A company called Wyath (Sp?) are involved - they produce SMA baby milk * Nestle o Mark finds out that the chief exec of Nestle is appearing at Oriel College Oxford, 30th November 1999 o They get in after one of the students lets them in a side door. The place is full of security guards. o Mark has to hide the camera down his trousers. o The head of corporate affairs is sitting in the front row and she recognises Mark o Speech is about corporate trust o Mark gets a question in after the speech o By now Jack has got the camera, but the security guards surround him o Mark asks if Mr Brabeck objects if they film his answer, he says OK o So the security guards have to stand down o Ask again why they can print in 3 languages in Switzerland but only 2 in Africa. He says he'll get an answer. o Next Mark finds out that Dr Timothy Stamps, Minister of Health and Child Welfare, Zimbabwe and Vice President of the World Health Assembly is visiting Britain and gets an interview with him. o Ass about the letter that Nestle are using in their PR in response to criticisms. o He says that the letter was written by his nutritional committee which comprises 14 people, 3 of whom are from the food marketing association, 2 of which are from infant formula production companies, one of which is Nestle. o Mark asks him what he would say to Mr Brabeck if he was there, he replies "Why do you want to destroy my children? Are you interested in ethnic cleansing?" o Start getting letters and faxes from Mr Brabeck o "I am issuing an order to all our companies that all our formula products must have the required elements on the label in the primary common language." o They stick to their word in Malawi and now have Chechewa instructions on the packaging * GM Baby milk o Mark gets a phone call from someone who attended the Barcelona conference about the GM cows and finds out that a herd of them exist! o PPL in Virginia have produced the cows and Wyath are sponsoring o Mark phones up PPL Virginia and gets through to David Ayares the Vice President of Research and Development, PPL Therapeutics Inc. o They talk about the introduction of the Human milk gene o Mark has an animal impersonator with him on in the studio o Says they are now looking to expand the herd and admits this will be a nutritional product and they are talking to all the major infant formula companies about it. They are 30 months from market. o Mark says he is actually in a farm yard now and has some fun with the use of the animal impersonator o Then phone PPL in Cheshire and talk to them about the plan to launch it commercially, they deny they plan to release it as an infant formula o More fun with the impersonator. o Their statement is: + "the company does not, and never has had any plan to produce a cow which produces human breast milk - the PPL cows produce their own milk but with the human protein alpha lactalbumin in. This has potentially life saving benefits for premature babies and would be subject to clinical trials and licensing as with pharmaceutical products, before being made available as a medical nutritional product. It will be 30 months before the research is at a stage when such trials can take place." + "The use of this human protein as an additive to conventional infant formula is only a long term theoretical possibility and no decision to seek to use the product in any way has been made." + "PPL currently has no agreements with any manufacturers to commercialise the product. No taxpayer money is being used in connection with this product." + "Finally PPL say that there are only three cows involved, not twenty and it is therefore wrong to call it a herd." o Now very odd that the company is contradicting itself o Another letter from Nestle Arrives saying "Pakistan. We will sticker all new cans of formula delivered (in Urdu) and will attempt to sticker existing stock in grocery stores that we are able to visit." o Pop around to MAFF (Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food) to ask a few questions (21st December 1999) with a milk tanker. o Take some "breast milk" from the tanker and start cleaning the windows. o Nestle write again saying they have been asked "to explore the possibility of other packaging otherwise a withdrawal will be necessary".

• Release Date

  Jan 31, 2010

• Runtime

  24:37