How did you spend your International Women’s Day? A pair of women stood at the Luohu Checkpoint in Shenzhen on the border of Hong Kong on March 8 to protest against milk powder while advocating breastfeeding. As The Nanfang reports:

The slogans on the signs read: “Limits on what you can buy don’t limit how much you can love;” “Milk powder is finite, a mother’s love is infinite;” “You don’t need foreign milk powder, you just need breast milk,” (the catchiness is somewhat lost in translation).

China has been embroiled in a bit of a powdered milk controversy, as supply continues to lag behind demand. Just last week, 45 were arrested in Hong Kong for smuggling baby milk formula. Meanwhile, Chinese health minister Chen Zhu recently called the smuggling a “temporary problem.”

So yeah, maybe breastfeeding may be the way to go. You didn’t hear that from us though. We want no part of the ongoing breast vs. bottle controversy.

Bikini-clad beauties advocate the use of breast milk at Hong Kong border (The Nanfang via CTDSB)

Need any more proof that Hong Kongers are fed up with mainland shoppers raiding their shelves of milk? On Tuesday, someone submitted a petition to the White House for the Obama administration to “request for international support and assistance,” which is vague, “as babies in Hong Kong will face malnutrition very soon,” which feels like an insult to places where babies are facing actual malnutrition. More than 5,000 people have signed so far; 100,000 signatures are needed by February 28 for the Obama administration to, I dunno, raise a People’s Eyebrow or something.

But even if that fails, Hong Kong’s legislature is attacking the issue from another front. According to SCMP, “The city is considering making infant milk formula a ‘reserved commodity’ after executive councillor Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee floated the idea to restrict exports and ensure local needs are met.” That would allow the city to set a price ceiling and restrict imports and exports. In simple terms, Ip proposes travelers be allowed to carry no more than two cans of milk powder out of the city.

That would counter pharmacies that reportedly reserved baby formula to sell at higher prices to mainlanders. “The government bears a responsibility to push down prices of goods where necessary,” she said.

Once the Chief Executive in Council approved the addition to the ordinance, the measure would take immediate effect, she said. The Legislative Council could vote on it at a later stage.

Leave it to chief executive CY Leung to be the voice of reason: “We hope to ensure that milk powder can be more conveniently delivered to mothers and babies [in a] joint Hong Kong-mainland effort.”

Joint Hong Kong-mainland efforts haven’t been very popular lately, unfortunately.

Move to protect Hong Kong milk formula stocks by making it ‘reserved commodity’ (SCMP)

Mothers in Hong Kong have been complaining (again) that they can’t get sufficient milk powder for their babies because mainland shoppers are buying the powder in bulk.

According to the Census and Statistics Department of the Hong Kong government, last year the city imported more than 37,900,000 kg of baby milk powder. The government has already increased the import by more than 30% in recent months, but sadly that amount of milk powder can’t satisfy the increasing demand from mainland shoppers.

Thanks to the sharp increase in demand, the price of milk powder has risen about 10-15% in Hong Kong. But even if you have the money, you have to compete with the Chinese shoppers who, instead of doing the hard work themselves, hire local elderly people and housewives to queue outside supermarkets and retail shops to wait for new supplies. Rate? HK$20 per can, according to a local newspaper. And the Chinese shoppers then resell the milk powder back on the mainland. Brilliant.

Hong Kong isn’t the only place where this is happening. Media in the Netherlands and Germany also report that Chinese people sweep supplies of milk powder from shop shelves, triggering countrywide shortage.

The backlash has been predictable. We know that food safety in China is rubbish, but please, people say, don’t try to solve your problems by robbing other people’s resources and causing unnecessary global panic.