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The National Committee for the Promotion of Breastfeeding moved to the Federal Institute for Health Protection of Consumers and Veterinary Medicine

12/1999, 23.07.1999

In future recommendations accessible on the BgVV homepage

By decree the Federal Ministry of Health has moved the National Committee for the Promotion of Breastfeeding from the Robert Koch Institute to the Federal Institute for Health Protection of Consumers and Veterinary Medicine as of 1 March 1999.

The Committee was established on 1 September 1994 by the Federal Ministry of Health after the federal government had adopted a resolution of the World Health Assembly of 1992, the so-called INNOCENTI DECLARATION of 1990 on "The Protection, Promotion and Support of Breastfeeding" on the national level. Because breastfeeding is of major importance for the health of mothers and children, the declaration calls on all governments to recognise the promotion of breastfeeding as an integral part of their health policy activities and to take the necessary steps.

The National Committee for the Promotion of Breastfeeding has the following tasks:

• Advising the federal government on political initiatives to overcome breastfeeding obstacles
• Co-ordinating the implementation of measures to promote breastfeeding
• Helping in the practical implementation of legal provisions, guidelines, recommendations
• Undertaking persuasive work to promote breastfeeding within professional organisations

Evaluation and reporting

The National Committee for the Promotion of Breastfeeding is made up of representatives of all groups which have to do in some professional category with breastfed children and breastfeeding mothers. Furthermore, it consists of representatives of all those organisations whose goal it is to promote and to assist breastfeeding. In order to anchor breastfeeding as the normal nutrition of the infant in the awareness of the population, the National Breastfeeding Committee issues information pamphlets (for inclusion in the maternity log or in the child's examination record) and recommendations on breastfeeding and the promotion of breastfeeding in hospitals.

It aims to guarantee that all the groups involved speak the same language and put forward the same arguments in support of breastfeeding.

The National Breastfeeding Committee also addresses problems of residues in human milk. Already in its breastfeeding recommendation of 20 November 1995, the Committee was of the opinion that the current residues do not constitute a health risk to the infant and thus that there were no grounds for any constraints. It recommends to mothers that they should exclusively breastfeed their infants up to the transition to spoon-feeding (i.e. four to six months) and does not see any health risk for the infant if, after that, in addition to weaning food and small children's nutrition, mothers continue to breastfeed.

Furthermore, the National Breastfeeding Committee does not see any grounds for changing its breastfeeding recommendations with regard to the dioxin contamination in some feeds and some isolated food samples (cf. BgVV homepage, http://www.bgvv.de/presse/aktuell). The dioxin contamination of human milk has fallen in recent years by far in excess of 50%. Even in the case of short-term consumption of dioxin-contaminated foods by the breastfeeding mother, an increase in the dioxin contamination of health relevance to human milk is not to be expected.

The address of the National Breastfeeding Committee is:

Nationale Stillkommission
Geschäftsstelle BgVV
Thielallee 88-92
14195 Berlin
FAX 030/8412-3715
E-mail:stillkommission@bgvv.de

Publications of the National Breastfeeding Committee can be requested in writing from the above address or by fax.

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