Breastfeeding even benefits the planet that baby will live on

Breastfeeding support is not only vitally important for those mothers who need it, but it should also be considered a ‘just transition’ activity for the environment, writes Aoife Long

Women value the experience of breastfeeding, the bonding opportunity with their baby, and the knowledge that their body can nurture another human. File Picture: iStock

“You’re not a bad mother if you give formula”. This was my doctor’s way of reassuring me as I struggled with breastfeeding after my son was born. I didn’t think I was a bad mother; breastfeeding was simply important to me and how I wanted to raise my child.

This is a common experience for mothers, according to Professor Amy Brown, author of Why Breastfeeding, Grief and Trauma Matter . Her research highlighted that women value the experience of breastfeeding, the bonding opportunity with their baby, and the knowledge that their body can nurture another human. 

It’s not only about the health outcomes. Without proper support, lots of mothers lose this experience that was valuable to them. When I was in hospital there was no lactation consultant available to me, so I used formula to get my son’s blood sugar levels back up. It worked, and I was very grateful for it. But I wished I had had better support with breastfeeding, especially as I continued to struggle in the early days and weeks.

I was in the middle of my PhD when I took my study break to have my son. My research topic was renewable gas policy, and I was becoming a carbon accountant in the process. Renewable gas is gas produced from any organic material. 

In Ireland, the most likely options to produce renewable gas are grass and cattle slurry, as both are widely available. The technology is anaerobic digestion, where bacteria in a giant industrial stomach break down the grass and slurry into a methane-rich gas. This methane is basically the same as natural gas, so it can be used for the same things.

The renewable version won’t be available in the same quantities as the vast offshore reserves that we have been drawing on, so it’s important to use it in the best way possible. The benefit of gas, renewable or otherwise, is that it is incredibly versatile. You can use it to produce electricity, to generate heat, or as a transport fuel. 

Spar have started using natural gas trucks. The Happy Pear twins have a biogas van. In a meeting one day, my supervisor was talking about how you could use renewable gas to replace the natural gas used to make infant formula, Ireland being a major player in global production.

Natural gas is used to produce the extreme heat needed to evaporate the milk; using renewable gas could help reduce the emissions in production. It led me to wonder if this could help mothers who want to breastfeed. Would breastfeeding support save emissions too?

Infant formula marketing has long been a controversial topic. Opponents argued that the promotion of infant formula over breastfeeding has led to health problems and deaths among infants.

The World Health Organization and UNICEF recognise that aggressive marketing methods are one of the factors undermining breastfeeding around the world. The WHO code aims to protect parents from predatory marketing practices.

These tactics include sponsoring medical conferences, free samples in hospitals, and advice lines suggesting that breastfeeding is painful, inconvenient, and embarrassing.

Without the counterbalance of effective breastfeeding support, this marketing works for formula companies, and causes harm to mothers who had hoped to breastfeed.

This harm became the focus of my research, with an expanded team including engineers, a philosopher, and a midwife. We calculated that meeting WHO targets for at least a 50% breastfeeding rate in Ireland and China would save far more emissions than using renewable gas to reduce the emissions in production.

We also found using renewable gas in production does not meet the ‘do no harm’ principle of social justice, especially when the gas would have much better use as a transport fuel for trucks, which cannot be easily electrified.

The formula industry already uses aggressive marketing tactics. Using renewable gas in production would allow the industry to claim green credentials, which would be further used as a marketing tool, adding to the efforts to undermine breastfeeding.

One of the key recommendations of our research is that breastfeeding support should be considered a ‘just transition’ activity.

Infant formula will always be necessary and valuable. It doesn’t make sense, however, to green an oversupply arising from marketing practices that undermine health benefits.

To be fair to everyone, the best approach is a bit of both, provide breastfeeding support to those that need it, and decarbonise the remaining infant formula demand with renewable gas.

Aoife Long is a PhD student at UCC