Although in Spain it is not done, because it is not recommended at the health level and because there is no custom, In U.S.A. breast milk has been marketed online for a long time. There are pages dedicated to it in which mothers offer their breast milk at a price of between 1.5 and 2 dollars on average for every 30 ml. (Some ask for less and others come to ask for up to 4 dollars, because they are considered very healthy women), being the best known page Only the Breast.
Probably many of you will be wondering now about the milk of these mothers, the danger of contagion, the possibility that it is contaminated, knowledgeable (and if you do not know I will tell you) that the milk donated in the milk banks of Everyone is collected according to hygienic recommendations, transported cold and treated (pasteurized) to avoid any possible contagion and any contamination of a milk that will be consumed by premature and / or sick babies.
Well, the same must have been asked in Ohio, where several researchers decided to study samples of milk purchased on the Internet to check their safety. The conclusion they reached, and now I explain more fully, is that most breast milk purchased online is contaminated.
How did they do the study
Concerned about the risk assumed by couples who buy breast milk online, or rather, the risk that the baby ends up living, which is the one that will finally be taken, they decided to buy milk online. They do not explain where they acquired it, since they refer to a "popular milk exchange website in the US", but they do say that they bought 101 milk samples, which compared with 20 samples of unpasteurized breast milk donated to a milk bank.
AdvertisingWhat was the results
They saw that most of the samples, 74% of them, were colonized by Gram-negative bacteria. In comparison to the milk donated to the banks they had more total bacteria, including more bacteria of the type Staphylococcus sp. 21% of the samples contained the cytomegalovirus, found no samples contaminated with the HIV virus and some were contaminated by Salmonella.
The results were worse when the milk had taken longer to reach the destination and worse when the milk had been taken longer. The authors noted that the big difference with respect to milk donated to banks was that in the extraction, manipulation or transfer basic hygiene measures had been omitted. In fact they ensure that many samples arrived without any refrigeration, at room temperature.
My only question is whether the researchers took into account that normal breast milk, that of any mother, just extracted, is bacteria load, as many as 700 different species and it should not be said that all women have contaminated breast milk. Perhaps they did take it into account and have observed the difference when comparing the Internet samples with that donated to the banks.
The ads do not talk about the methods of collection or transport
Most mothers explain that they are healthy women, with healthy babies, and offer their milk that probably has no health-level inconvenience for any baby. However, since the milk leaves the chest many things can happen.
A woman can be very careful and wash her hands well before an extraction and another may not be so. One woman can use clean boats for collection, and another can use others that are not as clean (or scrubbed but dried with a damp cloth, a breeding ground for microbes).
A woman can send it cold, in urgent transport, so that it arrives quickly and well preserved and another can send it in a boat inside a box, like who sends socks, spending 2 or 3 days the milk in there until arriving at the destination, logically in a dangerous state for its consumption, not because of the conditions of the mother, but for having been sent without taking into account the logical recommendations of conservation.
As a result the researchers explained that it can be dangerous to buy breast milk online for babies, especially if they are premature or if they have any disease, because of the risk of giving them milk contaminated with various bacteria that has not passed any control.
And in Spain? Not for sale?
No, in Spain, breast milk is not sold, probably for cultural reasons. There is no law that puts conditions on this, so in the absence of such a law, we can say that it is not regulated and that, until otherwise stated, it can be done.
Another thing is that, as I say, there is interest in offering breast milk purchased from another mother and, in the same way, there is interest in selling it, since to date it is neither bought nor sold, it is donated to the milk banks that treat it properly to be able to offer it to the babies who need it most, the premature babies and the patients admitted to the neonatal units.
