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The special dietary foods industries are proud to provide people with the essential safe and ‎nutritious foods they need to live, grow and thrive. This would not be possible without science. Scientifically formulated foods for special dietary uses (FSDU) support people throughout all stages of life, from the healthy growth and development of infants and young children to the dietary management of the elderly and people with certain diseases.

Industry science underpins food processing, research and innovation, and risk assessments. It also supports regulations and standards, and labelling and claims.

• Food processing: Processing is fundamental to nutrition and food safety in FSDU, ensuring the stability and uniform distribution of nutrients, improving digestibility and bioavailability, enabling fortification with sensitive ingredients, removing contaminants and ensuring microbiological safety. It also provides solutions, including through the addition of additives, to technical challenges, such as prolonging shelf-life, preventing the separation of ingredients, masking unpalatable tastes, maintaining the physical stability and making foods easier to swallow.
• Research and innovation: Extensive research and expertise is invested in the advancement of nutrition science, continuous product improvement and innovation. This helps ensure that FSDU are optimised for people with special dietary needs in terms of safety and nutritional adequacy.
• Risk assessments: Risks related to potential hazards in FSDU, such as contaminants, allergens and toxins, are identified and mitigated. Industry also contributes safety and exposure data to scientific bodies, such as JECFA, that ensure food standards are science-based. This is critical for FSDU as people with special dietary needs are more vulnerable than the general population.
• Regulations and standards: Our industry contributes scientific and factual information to regulatory processes, sharing information on the latest advances in nutrition science and providing insights into product research and innovation. Furthermore, scientific methods of analysis support food safety and quality by ensuring nutritional value, enabling quality control, detecting harmful substances, ensuring regulatory compliance and supporting innovation.
• Labels and claims: Science-based labels and claims on FSDU are instruments to ensure food safety, compliance and transparency as they must clearly communicate the product’s intended use, nutritional content and any health claims to avoid misuse and ensure suitability for vulnerable populations. This is crucial as inaccurate or insufficient labels could have significant health implications for people with special dietary needs.

Food safety is everyone’s business

As an industry, we are committed to enforcing the strictest standards and our members take pride in producing foods based on the latest scientific information, accredited food production and manufacturing operations and other global food management systems.

Since 1973, ISDI has supported the work of Codex Alimentarius in establishing science-based ‎food standards, guidelines and codes of practice that ensure food safety and quality. Our expertise in processes, ingredients, systems and data enable us to provide robust scientific information to support risk analysis and decisions taken by Codex and other global, regional and national authoritative bodies. We are committed to working with regulators, policy-makers and other stakeholders to improve the health and well-being of current and future generations.

We support World Food Safety Day as an opportunity to recognise the people who ‎help keep our food safe and celebrate the role of safe and nutritious food in providing for the ‎health and wellbeing of people with special dietary needs around the world.‎

On 26 May 2025, the World Health Assembly (WHA) adopted at its 78th session a resolution on ‘Regulating the digital marketing of breast-milk substitutes’. ISDI and its members support efforts to improve the health and wellbeing of infants and young children. This support is enshrined in companies’ global marketing policies to ensure their breast-milk substitute products are marketed responsibly.

We welcome the recognition of the importance of national context and a reference to international obligations within the resolution text. Governments play a key role in protecting families and are best placed to decide the policies and regulations that are appropriate within their social and legislative framework. However, the resolution could have gone further in protecting infant and young child health by focusing on ‘inappropriate’ marketing and recognising that when breastfeeding is not possible, formula is the only safe and nutritionally adequate alternative during an infant’s first year of life.

Governments also have an obligation to protect consumer rights by allowing parents to have access to science-based nutrition and product information to ensure informed decision-making. We believe strongly that parents and health care providers are better able to make nutrition decisions for their children with more information, not less.

In light of the many different factors influencing infant feeding practices, ISDI continues to believe that a holistic, multi-stakeholder approach is required to create an all-inclusive, supportive ecosystem to improve nutritional outcomes for infants and young children, whether they are breastfed, mixed-fed or formula-fed. ISDI looks forward to working with the World Health Organization, national governments and other stakeholders to achieve the common goal of safeguarding the health and wellbeing of infants and young children worldwide.

In August 2024, UNICEF published a guidance document for ‘Advocates of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes’ (the Code) on how to counter industry arguments against the implementation of the Code. The document alleges 36 common arguments ‘the baby food industry uses to oppose Code legislation’. As the representative association of the baby food industry worldwide, ISDI would like to address some of the misrepresentations in this document.

ISDI and its members strongly believe that breastfeeding provides the best nutritional start for babies. This is why we support and promote breastfeeding during the first six months of life, with the gradual introduction of appropriate complementary foods as advised by healthcare professionals.

This support is enshrined in companies’ global marketing policies that aim to ensure their breast-milk substitute products are marketed responsibly, reflecting the public health goals of the Code to protect and promote breastfeeding and ensure the proper use of breast-milk substitutes. This also means companies voluntarily exceed national law in some markets.

WHO recommendations, like the Code, can only be given legal effect insofar as they are transposed into national law (see here). It is important that such transpositions account for national context; there is no one-size-fits all approach as every country has a unique set of circumstances. This is why the 1981 Code (Art. 11) states that ‘Governments should take action to give effect to the principles and aims of this Code, as appropriate to their social and legislative framework’. This includes the scope of the Code as Member States and organisations interpret the term ‘breast-milk substitute’ differently.

Access to information about appropriate breast-milk substitutes supports the health and wellbeing of infants. Infant formula is the only recognised safe and nutritious alternative to breast milk in the first year of life and is life-sustaining and life-saving in the absence of breast-milk.

Information provided by companies is scientific, fact-based and complementary to the information provided through healthcare systems, which is not always easily accessible or available. Furthermore, interactions with HCPs are consistent with their medical responsibility to provide nutrition recommendations that are evidence-based and meet rigorous scientific standards. This enables parents and caregivers to make informed choices, which is especially important when they cannot or choose not to breastfeed.

Infant formula and other foods for infants and young children are part of the solution to malnutrition, contributing to the achievement of global public health goals and supporting better health and nutrition for infants and young children. Every infant has a right to high quality nutrition, whether breastfed, mixed-fed or formula-fed, and our industry strives to improve the nutritional status and lives of infants and children worldwide.