Before Stephen was born, my biggest concern about breastfeeding was that I would not be able to produce enough breast milk to satisfy him. A month or so after he was born, I found out that you could actually produce too much breast milk and have an oversupply problem. I must have wasted so much breast milk letting it soak numerous cloth diapers, handkerchiefs, and towels. If someone had offered to buy it or take it from me without liability, I would have done it.

Mothers with oversupply now have a place to sell their breast milk - Prolacta Bioscience.


Prolacta is aiming to buy donated breast milk from independent milk banks and hospitals across the US, pasteurise it and sell it back to hospitals to treat low-birth weight babies.

It is also looking to supply it for babies with heart defects, who need surgery and are at risk of infection, and children who are being given chemotherapy for cancer.

And the firm wants to analyse the different components of breast milk - there are more than 100,000 although scientists only know what a few thousand do - to see if breast milk therapies can treat disease common to newborn babies.


Some are concerned that women would feel pressure to sell their breast milk for money instead of giving it to their own babies. But I think that any mother who can do the math would know that selling their breast milk would not bring in enough money to pay for the cost of formula and associated paraphernalia. And, if women are educated about the many benefits of breast milk, especially if it’s direct from the breast, I doubt they’d be willing to shortchange their own children. In the end, however, it’s still the woman’s choice to do what she wants with her body and the milk her body makes.

BBC News, August 4, 2005
Pointer from Medpundit.