There is no regulation or any express law on the possibility of selling breast milk, so we are facing a specific legal vacuum. And that there are records of milk banks in Vienna dating back to 1909 and that the figure of the nurse is as old as humanity . With that name or also as a foster parent, nursemaid, milkmaker or breeder, women who breastfed an infant who was not their child were called. Today it is in disuse in the Western world, but the use of wet nurses dates back to prehistory and was common until the 19th century to feed children whose mothers were unable or unwilling to breastfeed their children. This does not mean that the sale of breast milk cannot have legal consequences if it is considered as a generic commercial act or under the principle of responsibility for one’s own acts.
In our country there is the Spanish Association of Human Milk Banks , a non-profit organization whose purpose is to promote breastfeeding and encourage the obtaining and distribution of breast milk through selfless donations. The fact that it is a free, non-profit act , is a guarantee against the risk of transmission of infections due to lack of medical control implied by the free trade of milk, today present on the internet.
And it is that the studies carried out on milk samples sold online detected a high percentage of exposure to infectious diseases, illegal drugs, medicines and bacteria due to inadequate thermal storage and transport conditions. It follows that whoever buys breast milk without control is exposed to risk , and whoever sells it risks infecting a baby. So, just as someone who knowingly or recklessly transmits a disease to another person may be guilty of a crime of injury, the sale of one’s own milk for profit knowing that it may be harmful would lead to criminal or civil liability .
