ABSTRACT
In 2013, a group of educated, middle-class Hong Kong citizens became so agitated by potential health risks posed by formula milk shortages that they submitted the petition ‘Baby Hunger Outbreak in Hong Kong, International Aid Requested’ on the White House website, asking the United States to intervene on their behalf (Tsang, Chiu, & Nip, 2013).
Within a few days, 13,400 individuals have signed the petition (Chen, 2013) making this ‘Baby Hunger Outbreak’ petition one of a series of civil movements created by Hong Kong parents to secure their babies’ consumption of formula milk. These parents claimed that the shortage of formula milk was a great health risk to infants and young children in Hong Kong, where the breastfeeding rate after the first month is only 2.3%. Such events in this ‘right to baby formula’ movement seem to contradict trends in many western societies, where the mainstream medical discourse is that ‘breast is best’ and formulafeeding is believed to increase health risks to babies and mothers.
