Italy: A Baby Milk company was ordered to withdraw all materials and advertisements
of two products which claims were considered as false

Between September and December 2006, Milte Italia (note that Milte is a Spanish company controlled by the German company Humana) started to aggressively promote and market two products:

- Bestbreast, a supplement (vitamins, minerals and the like) for breastfeeding mothers claimed to
increase the vitamin and mineral content of breastmilk to the benefit of the breastfed baby; and

- PiùLatte (translate "MoreMilk"), a product containing the active ingredient silomarine and claiming to
"increase the production of breastmilk up to 85%".

The campaign targeted pediatric journals, and included leaflets disseminated through drug representatives in hospitals and pediatric clinics, but also mothers and the public in general, through web pages and mails
sent to several discussion mail groups.

Advertisements on BestBreast for pediatricians lacked any evidence for the claim that the product would
enrich breastmilk, while the advertisement on PiùLatte carried the reference of a study published in the
Bulletin of the Italian Society of Neonatology, a journal that is not peer reviewed and not even catalogued in the Italian registry of medical journals. The article was signed by an unknown researcher based at
Universidad San Marcos, Lima, Peru, and by the scientific director of the small Italian company that provides Milte Italia with silomarine.

The reported research had been conducted somewhere (not specified) in Peru on a group of mothers with
4 to 6-month old infants randomly assigned to silomarine or placebo; the study was flawed and badly
reported by any scientific standard.

Between 12 December 2006 and 2 January 2007, Ibfan Italia filed a complaint on this marketing campaign to:

1.- The jury for the control of advertisements of IAP agency, the Italian Advertising Association, a sort of
private control committee of the industry; and

2.- The government Authority for the Control of Marketing and Competition (equivalent to the Advertising Standard Authority in UK), known in Italy as the "Antitrust".

The IAP agency made its verdict public on 20 March 2007: only the claim that PiùLatte "increases the
production of breastmilk up to 85%" was considered false and Milte Italia was requested to remove the 85% figure. Which it did, while continuing with all the remaining items of the campaign.

The "Antitrust" made its verdict public on 3 July 2007. All the claims made by Milte Italia were
considered as false and the company was ordered to withdraw all materials and advertisements
(but not the products, regularly registered by the Italian Drug Authority). In addition, Milte Italia
was fined for a total of 26,100 Euros for its false claims.

Ibfan Italia is satisfied by this verdict. Yet it came after a long process that allowed Milte Italia to market useless products for almost one year without any kind of control. In addition, the two products are still
legally on sale and we expect Milte Italia to re-launch them with a secondary marketing campaign. It is clear that a) this kind of product should not be allowed, and that b) marketing campaigns should be assessed
before they start, before and not after, and not only when some consumers protest.