The case for commercialising breast milk

Los Angeles

WHEN Gretty Amaya took an unpaid maternity leave five months ago, she started what she calls a part-time job to help pay the bills. Ms Amaya, who lives in Miami, has made more than US$2,000 so far by pumping breast milk and selling what is left over after feeding her baby daughter.

Frozen milk from Ms Amaya - and from hundreds of other women - is flown here to what resembles a pharmaceutical factory. Inside, it is concentrated into a high-protein product fed to extremely premature babies in neonatal intensive care units, at a cost of thousands of dollars a baby.

Breast milk, that most ancient and fundamental of nourishments, is becoming an industrial commodity, and one of the newest frontiers of the biotechnology industry - even as concerns abound over this fast-growing business. The company th…