How does the breast milk market in the US

Breast milk

Rebecca Scholtes from Palm Springs, California, enters a hospital building with two children in a wheelchair. She can give 2800 grams of breast milk in a special frozen container. The fact is that milk is no longer needed for her youngest son, who has grown up enough to switch to solid foods.

“I don’t know what to do with my milk,” Scholtes says. She brings it to the Mother's Milk Bank, a nonprofit organization in San Jose, California. There they provide breast milk to babies born weak and who need observation in the intensive care unit.

Milk mothers such as Rebecca Sholtes, can save premature babies, as well as children whose mothers for some reason can not give them their own milk.

The US Food and Drug Administration does not require mandatory testing of donor breast milk. Some states, including California and New York, control milk cans, in particular, issues that concern safety standards. Many non-commercial cans of breast milk themselves check donors.

The biggest concern, according to the Food and Drug Administration, are sites that offer to buy breast milk from them, because then there is a high risk that the donor may be a carrier of various diseases. Among them are drug addiction and HIV.

Scott Elster, CEO Prolacta Bioscience, A company that uses human milk in pharmacology advocates a more rigorous level of verification.

“We believe that all breast milk should be tested, and donors cannot be drug addicts or carriers of any dangerous diseases,” he says.

Some breastfeeding enthusiasts refer to human milk as "liquid gold." Sometimes it seems like everyone wants it - from non-profits like Mothers' Milk Bank, to high-tech pharmaceutical companies that use it in high-quality medical products.

No one knows exactly how much of this excess milk is donated or sold, but the volume increases. Polina Sakamoto, Executive Director Mothers' milk banK and the former president of the association of non-profit milk banks in the United States and Canada, reported that its subsidiary banks donated about 130 thousand liters of breast milk to hospitals last year, compared with less than half of that figure five years ago.

Commercial operations with breast milk are also increasing. Prolacta Bioscience stores in stock freezers filled with human milk. The company pays donors $ 1 for 28 grams of breast milk.

Internet sites with titles such as Only breast и Eats on feetsare also developing rapidly. According to one report, the number of online breastfeeding transactions in the United States increased from 22 000 in 2012 to 55 000 in 2015.

Studies show that milk that is passed from hand to hand on unofficial sites can be dangerous. In 2015, a group of researchers who bought breast milk on the open market reported in Pediatrics, that about 10% of samples contain cow's milk. The same team told 2013 that milk bought online is often contaminated with pathogenic bacteria.

Kim Apdegrouv, executive director of a non-profit bank Mothers' Milk Bank in Austin, Texas, says the FDA should regulate unofficial milk sites. Ideally, all the milk should go through 'Milk Bankfocused on distributing it according to the greatest medical needs. This, in her opinion, will help make the practice safer and provide priority attention to the sickest children.

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