Conceptualizing the Commercialization of Human Milk: A Concept Analysis.
Heather Christine Rusi, Laurence Grummer-Strawn, Maryanne Tigchelaar Perrin and 2 others
PMID 38855823WHAT IT FOUND
Commercialized human milk products are packaged and sold for profit.
Processed human milk is not equivalent to breast milk. Concerns raised include safety, equity, breastfeeding support, and weak regulation.
Key findings
01Commercialized human milk is defined as the packaging and sale of human milk and human milk components for financial gain.
02Processed human milk is not equivalent to human milk from the breast and lacks the dynamic nature and personalized nutrition of breastfeeding human milk, with limitations in many bioactive and immune components.
03The reviewed articles describe inconsistent regulation and raise concerns about safety, inequitable access, exploitation of donors, displacement of maternal feeds, and undermining breastfeeding.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Only 13 articles met inclusion criteria, and the authors describe the literature as limited and novel, so this paper cannot show how common commercialized human milk products are or what they do to infants. No systematic review protocol was published, and article selection, data extraction, and theme identification were done by one person or author, so the process has little independent checking. The review included English-language work only and included expert opinions, commentaries, a report, a narrative review, case studies, a dissertation, and a law review, not patient studies or tested interventions. The paper reports concerns, definitions, and regulatory gaps, but it did not measure infant outcomes, product safety, cost, or effectiveness.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicting interests and received no financial support for the research, authorship, or publication. Disclosures include employment by the World Health Organization and funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the University of Calgary, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat commercialized human milk products as proven safe, effective, or equivalent to breast milk. This paper analysed articles and policy concerns, not patient outcomes, and it did not compare products in infants.