You've got to love the recession - all of a sudden big manufacturers are worried about the poor. Worried their poor customers won't have the money to buy their products anyway.
As Suffolk County, New York tries to become the first county in the country to enforce a ban on Bisphenol-A (BPA) in children's products, manufacturers are crying poverty.
Force them to remove the reported carcinogen, and makers say they'll have to jack up their prices so high it will be bad for low-income parents and create problems for hospitals. Snort.
They do realize six of the largest baby bottle makers JUST announced they're going BPA free, right? It's obviously working for some companies . . . or at least six of them. Lobbying against the county, representatives of the plastic bottle and sippy cup makers asked lawmakers to point the bill toward EMPTY containers, freeing them up to fill bottles of formula sent to hospitals for newborn babies with lots of icky chemicals.
But, hey, they're helping poor people. They can sleep at night!
The Suffolk County Legislature voted unanimously in support of the ban on BPA earlier this month, and a set of state legislators are now working together to make a similar ban effective across New York.[source]
2 comments:
Seriously! Exactly when did the big chemical manufacturers start worrying about the poor? It's up to the manufacturers to respond by figuring out how to make safe, affordable alternatives if they want parents to buy their products.
As you pointed out - they must have missed the fact that major baby bottle makers have already committed to dropping BPA. Besides that, companies like Nuby have been making extremely affordable BPA-free products for the last decade. It's not that hard to find a safe product that almost anyone can afford.
As for issues with baby formula, parents and hospitals may just have to switch to powdered forms for a while until a new epoxy is developed to line the caps of ready-to-eat formulas.
Overall, it's thrilling to see that our voices are finally being heard!
Thanks for posting this article. The industry is getting more and more desperate in their attempts to not just use the safer alternatives that exist! Here in CT we are hard at work on legislation to ban BPA from food and beverage containers. We showed a major powdered formula manufacturer's container during testimony that is BPA free; confirmed with said powdered formula manufacturer that the container and lid we showed are BPA free and are now under fire from the powdered formula manufacturer's lobbyist for lying. They claim there is BPA in that container. Bizarre!
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