The Sunday Express published an article on Sunday 25th July 2010 reporting the findings in this study. The study, partly funded by the Israeli Milk Council, advises women to give their babies one bottle of cow's based formula milk per day (starting before the age of 2 weeks) in order to protect them from developing allergy to cow's milk protein.

This goes against recommendations to exclusively breastfeed for the first 6 months and to delay introduction of cow's milk until the baby is over the age of one.

Patti Rundell, from the group Baby Milk Action, says in the article: "This goes against World Health Organisation advice for exclusive breastfeeding for six months. The risks of allergy are outweighed by the risks of infections of the ear, respiratory system and gut, which are all higher in bottlefed babies."

Dr Sharron Bransburg Zabary is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant and researcher in the field of the immune system at Tel Aviv University. She reports, in a separate article, that there are several flaws in the study, which are:

• The study is retrospective, based on self-reporting by the mothers weeks and months after the fact.
• The study discarded data about exposure to cow's milk formula in the hospital after birth.
• No correlation was found with known factors in the literature that increase the rate of dairy allergy.
• The study focused only on milk allergies, which are not generally life threatening and usually pass by one year of age.
• The study was funded, in part, by the Israeli Milk Council.

To read the full article and leave a comment go to The Sunday Express website.

Click here for more information about the study itself which is not mentioned in the newspaper article.

People are urged to post comments about the article directly to The Sunday Express newspaper.

People are also urged to write a letter to the editor for publishing such an irresponsible article. You can either do that by emailing sunday [dot] exletters [at] express [dot] co [dot] uk or by the writing to The Editor, Sunday Express, Number 10 Lower Thames Street, London, EC3 E6EN.