Formula sickens New Zealand babies

Heinz complaints not linked to Chinese scandal

MARTIN HUNTER/Sunday Star Times

NEW, NOT IMPROVED: Five month old Jessica Ward of Christchurch was sick after a change to the make up of her infant formula.

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Dozens of New Zealand babies are falling sick - with symptoms including vomiting, bleeding nappy rash, wind, constipation and severe diarrhoea - after a major baby formula company changed the supplier of its products.

Heinz, which owns formula company Nurture Baby, says 70 parents have called its 0800 Careline in the last six weeks, concerned that two different types of formula are making their babies sick.

The formulas are Nurture Starter (with a blue lid) and Nurture Follow-On (red lid). They are still on shelves and are safe - they do not contain melamine, the chemical behind the baby milk scandal in China. The problem is that 400 cans went on sale with no warning that the supplier, and some ingredients, had changed.

Babies are extremely sensitive to changes in food and would usually be carefully weaned onto any new formula.

Two weeks ago outraged parents started a thread on the TradeMe message board to share stories about their babies' symptoms. Some said their babies had explosive diarrhoea, other babies were vomiting and developing nappy rash so severe it bled.

Christchurch mother Justine Ward, 34, told the Sunday Star-Times her five-month-old daughter Jessica screamed and cried with "incredibly bad wind" for the five days she was on the new formula. Jessica has reflux "which is basically milk coming back into the oesophagus and burning", and the formula made that much worse.

"It's quite stressful when your baby's sick," Ward says. "It does make you wonder about their commitment to their customers, especially when there's such a big uproar about baby formula in China... With all these babies being sick on Nurture it does just play on the back of my mind - what have I been feeding my baby?"

Ward, like many of the parents on TradeMe, is angry at the way the company treated parents and will never go back to using Nurture Baby.

Last week - six weeks after the phone calls from parents began - Heinz finally swung into damage control.

It posted an unreserved apology on the TradeMe message board, and on the Nurture Baby website, explaining that "human error" had let the 400 cans of changed formula slip onto shelves with no warning.

In a statement Heinz said the apology and explanation was prompted by parents' "misinformation and confusion" over the formulas. But it did not notify the Food Safety Authority.

On Friday a spokeswoman for the authority said she was surprised to hear of the issues. Although companies were not legally required to report to the authority "we would expect to be advised of this kind of thing".

Paddy O'Brien, general manager for quality at Heinz, says he will now call the authority.

In its statement, Heinz says "we were not allowed to advertise this change [under NZ advertising law] and the underlid leaflet was thought to be the most appropriate way to communicate".

The company could have changed the packaging, Ward said. "I would have expected a noticeable change on the packaging ... There should have been something glaringly obvious."

After Heinz realised the 400 cans were not labelled it sent representatives to stores to put leaflets under every can's lid. But Ward says the leaflet she saw was only 5cm square and she threw it away, thinking it was advertising.

The Heinz statement says the Starter and Follow-On formulas now come from its sister company in the United Kingdom. These used to be made in New Zealand and soon the company will switch again, to an Australian supplier. The UK supplier is being used to cover stock shortages during the changeover.

The statement says every effort was made to ensure the UK product matched the previously NZ-made formulas nutritionally but some ingredients were produced differently.

Consumers' Institute head Sue Chetwin says Heinz should have clearly labelled the different formulas, and once it started getting complaints it should have alerted the Food Safety Authority.

- © Fairfax NZ News