8/3/02
In Berkeley California more than 1,000 mothers and their babies set a new mass
breastfeeding record in an event aimed at promoting the health benefits of
nursing.
The 1,135 mothers in Berkeley, the famously liberal university town near San Francisco, broke the Guinness record for "Most Women
Breastfeeding Simultaneously" set this week by 767 women in
Australia.
"It was more than a success. It was a smashing success because the women loved it, the band was great and everything went
right"
Organizers, who marched the mothers and their babies from a park to a nearby theater for the mass nurse-in, said they planned to send the results to Guinness judges in England to verify the new world record.
Volunteers from the Bay Area Lactation Association and two independent observers
including Berkeley's mayor -- were on hand to help count the nursing mothers. The city sponsored the event as part of its women, infants and children nutrition
program.
Organizers said the event would promote the health benefits of
breastfeeding, which research has shown reduces a woman's risk of breast cancer.
A recent study in the British medical publication Lancet, for example, calculated that for every year a woman
breastfeeds, it cuts her risk of breast cancer by 4.3 percent.
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