News: New allergy conference criticised over sponsorship links

On Tuesday 18 November, a new conference, the Infant Allergy & Paediatrics Conference 2025 was hosted by the Journal of Family & Child Health, a journal published by the Mark Allen Group, with sponsorship from Kendamil and Danone.

Following our engagement, on 4 November 2025 the British Medical Journal published this news piece about this conference.

We cited this BMJ piece in individual letters sent to each of the 9 speakers that were listed on the conference website, explaining the problems with the conference and the conflicts of interest created by the conference sponsorship. Four speakers withdrew, in addition to another speaker who withdrew over a month ago already, after being contacted. While the conference still went ahead, we were do believe that awareness is improving regarding the problems created by conferences sponsored by the formula industry. Hopefully, with reduced attendance by health professionals, organisers of such conferences will start to seek alternative funding sources, including as suggested by WHO guidance on alternative funding sources for events, published in 2024.

Mark Allen publishers are now advertising their annual British Journal of Midwifery conference for 2026, which also has formula industry sponsorship. We have written letters about this conference to speakers in 2021 and to the organisers in 2022), have had opinions on it published in the British Medical Journal in 2024 and 2025, and yet still the conference continues with industry formula industry sponsorship. We would encourage other health professionals to write to the organisers (see our website here for guidance on how to write about this or you are welcome to email us and we can share our previous letters with you). We strongly urge health professionals to carefully consider their attendance at this conference.