It was only a matter of time until I wrote post about Nestle, and with the latest video of their chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe doing the rounds on social media sites today I thought now was as good a time as any.
I know three different groups of people when it comes to the Nestle boycott. One group, like me never buy their products, ask that people do not buy them as gifts and like to read all the latest news about the boycott and remain horrified by the actions of a company ranked among the 50th biggest in the world.
The second group feel that Nestle are somewhat evil, try not to buy their products but don’t worry too much if the occasional jar of coffee or bar of chocolate comes their way. They don’t mind me telling them the news about the boycott but would probably not search it out for themselves.
The third group don’t care at all about the boycott, don’t really understand why I bother, and some of them think it is quite amusing that we care quite as much as we do.
For the record I don’t mind which group you are in as long as you know all the facts.
But I would like to write something about why it is important to me that we as a family boycott Nestle.
So why them? That is the question I am usually asked. There are dozens of unethical, billion dollar companies out there, why pick on this one.
Well, to start with, Nestle call themselves “the world’s leading nutrition, health and wellness company”, yet persistently and continually (yes, even this year) breach the International code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes, which main aims are to promote breastfeeding and “to ensure that marketing of breastmilk substitutes, feeding bottles and teats is appropriate”.
All children, ALL, Deserve the best nutrition they can get. No one can argue that breastmilk is that. However, in developed countries, most of the time, formula can be given safely. This is not the case in more impoverished parts of the world, where formula is sold in countries where the instructions are not in the languages of the people who live there, where there is no clean water to make up the formula and where people can not afford the exorbitant prices. Mothers are given free samples to begin with, then when their own milk as dried up the free samples stop, leaving them to try and scrape together the money to buy more, many trying to eke out the “precious” formula and so using half or quarter measures. Or using filthy water, because that is all they have to make up the bottles, causing illness and death to thousands of babies. This is happening. Now.
Add to that their blatant disregard of the value of breastmilk as they squirm their way around the advertising guidelines by the skin of their teeth and it is not looking good.
So, maybe you don’t really care about formula vs breastmilk and how babies are fed.
OK, how about child labour?
In 2001 Nestle promised it would end the use of child labour on its cocoa farms. 12 years later and the practice is still widespread. The cocoa that goes into the chocolate bars in our shops comes from farms where children, many trafficked, work long hours, in stifling heat, around dangerous pesticides and face beatings, or accidental injury from the machete’s they use in their work.
Nestle knows this happens. They admit it happens. They mapped their whole supply chain so they could potentially stop it from happening. But to date they have not done so and they can not certify any of its cocoa supply as free from child labour.
No, they are not the only ones. But they are one of the biggest, are their billion dollar profits worth more than those children?
Right, so baby formula and child labour still not got you convinced?
How about the ethics of the people that run the company?
As one of the biggest sellers of bottle water in the world, they continually and controversially buy up valuable groundwater supplies to meet the demand they have created. They use all methods in their power: financial, legal and political pressures to get hold of these water resources. They are creating a dependence on bottled water, especially in developing countries where water is scarce to begin with.
With all that in mind, their chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe appeared in an interview where he publically announced that water is not a human right….that nature is bad and genetically modified food is better….water is not a human right? Wow….
I could go on all night, I really could, they are a greedy, profit above all else, disgraceful company and I for one believe they should be pulled to task for everything they do that endangers peoples lives and takes the choices away from others. In this world we live in it is easy to turn our heads and look the other way. Easy to assume that we as individuals can not make a difference. Easy to go with the majority.
But please don’t. Please think about what sort of world we want for our children and for their children. Think about what sort of world you want right now. Don’t act without thinking.
