Stop US Intervention Against Breastfeeding!

Just this morning, October 5, 2007, I opened my email inbox and found out a message that is so shuddering in my mind. How the hell could the US officials and businessmen trivialize the health and nutrition of babies worldwide? That is inhuman; plain and simple!

I am quoting some texts of the message and ask you to please sign the online petition.

Help us save 16,000 Filipino children’s lives every year and 1.5 million babies dying every year throughout the world, because they were not breastfed.

To counter the mounting pressure that US officials and businessmen exert against breastfeeding advocates and Philippine health officials to prevent them from strictly implementing the laws that protect breastfeeding, the initiator of this petition-signing organized two simultaneous breastfeeding Guinness World Records in single and multiple sites in the Philippines, synchronized breastfeeding worldwide and initiated Senate and Congress hearings in her country. The battle has reached the Supreme Court and the case is still being adjudicated. The case constitutes a precedent that may affect the Breastfeeding Movement in the entire world, especially in developing countries where the financial muscle of multinational corporations and official American pressure are influencing national policies.

We humbly submit for your consideration this petition to the people and leaders of the United States from the mothers and breastfeeding advocates of the world, in consideration of the coming US presidential election, and the opportunity it provides us who are gathered here from all over the world, to acquaint them of our concerns, especially those of the poor countries, that they may better exercise their role as the leader and role model of the world.

And the dispositive portion of the petition reads as follows:

Now therefore, the undersigned mothers and breastfeeding advocates, representing themselves, their organizations and their respective nations, as well as American citizens who believe in the cause of breastfeeding, do humbly and respectfully petition the people and leaders of the United States,
(1) to enjoin the multinational milk companies as well as the United States government to respect the 2001 Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health that Public Health is far more important than issues involving intellectual property rights (WTO on 14 November 2001 declared, “The TRIPS Agreement does not and should not prevent members from taking measures to protect public health”; a joint WTO-WHO study in 2002 reaffirmed that statement);
(2) to enjoin US embassies to observe international protocol in presenting their demands to other countries, that is, to course their demands in writing through the Foreign Ministry of the country involved, instead of utilizing back channels and verbal intervention to impose its will on government officials, especially when it involves issues of Breastfeeding;
(3) to make sure that the breastfeeding issue is taken up in every political platform in the coming US presidential elections for the consideration of the entire electorate; and finally
(4) to make it understood among all nations on earth that America ’s main business is NOT “business itself” or corporate profits, but more importantly, international amity and the betterment of all humankind, as befits a nation with the might and power to lead the world.

Please sign this petition at: http://www.petitiononline.com/probf1/petition.html

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