Is National Dried Milk really dangerous?

The DHSS report on Present Day Practice in Infant Feeding, published in 1974, met with muted publicity, but eventually questions in Parliament led to a statement by the Health Minister to the effect that National Dried Milk was no longer recommended for infant feeding. This announcement was premature, in that no acceptable substitute had (or has) been produced by the Government for distribution in the Infant Welfare Clinics, and it was pounced upon by the press, which made the most of the possible dangers of National Dried and other well established infant milks (such as Cow and Gate Full‐ and Half‐cream, Ostermilk Golden, and Carnation). The result has been a great deal of needless anxiety among the numerous mothers who are successfully rearing their babies on these milks. It may strike the reader as unlikely that milks which have been in widespread use since the 1940s, and on which many thousands of babies have grown well and in good health, could be in any respect dangerous. Such scepticism is quite justifiable. The purpose of this article is to explain the differences between the older infant milks including National Dried Milk and the new generation of ‘humanised’ milks, and to show where dangers could lie in the earlier preparations.