To politely suggest to the Nursery that they shouldn't be using Nestle products?

[zimm]

DD's otherwise excellent nursery serves some nestle branded cereals. This doesn't sit well with me as I don't think a place that cares for children should support Nestle. I imagine it just hasn't crossed their minds but it does bug me that her fess are used to buy products from Nestle. WIBU to take in some baby milk action stuff and make a suggestion they switch products? Yes I know they are are bigger things to worry about but I do believe if a nestle boycott is worth doing, then it is worth doing right.

Nurseries usually use cereal parents take in or request.so yes if you don't want to use nestle up to you.but no not your remit to enforce upon other parents to boycott.I use nestle the kids like it,and I'm not minded to change

There are a number of non-arguments on here:

"buying own brand products and then saying that's ok because at least it's not nestle's name on the box is a complete cop-out."
Boycotters tend to either pick a major brand (many, for instance, just boycott Nescafe) or they boycott as many Nestle brands as they find out about (they change regularly so it takes some keeping up with). This includes own-brand cereals to use the example here. It is not the case that boycotters who choose to boycott as many Nestle products as they can will accept Nestle-made own brand cereals. A more difficult dilemma would be, say, Body Shop - well known for its ethical brand yet part-owned by Nestle.

"the boycott has achieved nothing - nestle are a huge company and the few thousand out of 60 million Brits that boycott it make not one jot of difference to them."

As I've previously stated, the boycott has achieved A LOT. Furthermore the continued boycott offers some counter to Nestle's complete lack of ethics. Without it they would be far, far worse as was shown in the short time that the boycott was lifted. Pressure on Nestle (and other companies) from Baby Milk Action and its members makes changes ALL THE TIME. info.babymilkaction.org/nestlefree gives you an overview.

The boycott is WORLD WIDE. It is NOT a few thousand Brits. It's millions of people world-wide in more than 100 countries. It is huge.

"I think the boycott is pointless.I can't see them feeling it even in the tip of their littlest toenail.And if they did it would be the poor beggars working on the shop floor taking the pain -getting their overtim cut, redundancy.Are they the people you want to hurt?"

As I've already said, they do feel it. And it's not the shop floor people who are affected, it's their marketing practises - obviously - because by changing them they can reduce the boycotters.

"So what else do you all boycott then?

Tesco (we know about their practices)
anyone who uses a sweat shop (that's pretty much the entire high street)
Coca Cola (equally dubious practices involving coke in baby bottles and that's before you get to their water consumption/employee practices)
Apple (the highest number of suicides among employees of any company in the world - why is that?)"

Another non-argument because this argument is essentially "there is so much that is bad that there is no point in trying to change something that is bad".

I can't fix Somalia
I can't save the whales
I can't stop Tesco shutting down the local butcher
I can't help my friend walk again
I can't feed every 5 year old in the Kibera slum in Nairobi who spends their day picking nuts off the ground then risking their lives in the rush hour trying to sell them at 5p a packet to rich commuters through their car windows.

Well, I may as well pack up and go home then.

Or, maybe I can just remember the starfish principle and do what I can do.

Just think - if everyone did ONE MORE THING. Just one more. Just another £2 a month to a charity. Just got around to giving blood. Just decided to donate their breastmilk to the local milk bank. Just helped one more time with the school PTA. Just avoided a Nestle product and told Nestle they were doing it. Just think what might happen. Just think what a difference that would make.

And if everyone doesn't do it? Well, that's ok, because if you do it, dear reader, you who is reading this post, if YOU do that one more thing - well - that's one more good thing in the world that didn't exist before. And that is good. And that will make a difference to someone.

You might be right Andrew

Still my actions have deprived them of a few thousand pounds and I don't feel grubby about where my money's been spent.

katie I don't think that andrew IS right - or at least as a generalisation it's most unfair. However, I also see it as another non-argument (plus I don't see any reason why it's wrong to feel good about a choice).

Sure, people will make all sorts of decisions for all sorts of reasons and if they choose to boycott Nestle because they think it will make them seem like a better person, well, , whatever. If it makes them feel happier themselves then some good is done in the world just by that. If it is because they really believe it is part of something that makes a decision, that's fine too.

Whichever it's fewer bucks in the pockets of Nestle because of the boycott, ergo it's part of the boycott, so it doesn't really matter, does it.

I thought he was making the point that's it easier to get people to join up if it makes you feel good. Which I think is true. Have I got it wrong?

maaaybe. I have nothing against people feeling good . In fact, I wish more people did feel good .

I interpreted it as saying that people followed boycotts to make themselves feel and look good, not to help others. I saw this as rather an over-generalisation!

IF it encourages people to join up, then fill your boots, I say. I guess I'm just not convinced that's why MOST people do it.

But perhaps it doesn't matter either way :)

No Katie spot on!

I don't suppose my parents' then my refusal to buy Outspan did much to bring down apartheid. But it was easier to get us to do so against a regime like that than it might be against somewhat less obviously nasty ones. These boycotts are a blunt weapon and rarely a very sharp or effective one - it may be that Nestle would be worse than they are if there had been no boycott but that, by definition, is impossible to prove.

Better to try on the off chance it does make a difference than not to try at all. That might actually be my whole life's philosophy right there.

andrew I think the proof comes from the way they went backwards when the boycott was lifted for a while :)

You're probably right about Outspan... and I've had a lot of discussions about this with a bloke who happens to be senior in the World Food Programme... because I was considering whether it was the right thing to do to (say) boycott veg from Zimbabwe. His POV, which made a lot of sense, was that it's the poor farmers who would suffer with a widespread veg boycott, not the government there.

On the other hand, what does work is talking about it. So, say, if someone in the local shop responded to your mum's request for oranges with a pack of Outspan, and she (say) said no thanks, we don't buy Outspan because xyz, then there's someone else who is now aware of it and can consider the issue themselves. Not the orange issue, but the apartheid issue. And the more people who did that, the more people there were to put pressure on to change things. These things spread!

A lot of bad things continue because people don't know about them. So, getting the message across using the boycott works well :)

Sometimes it's a bit embarassing, such as when DS1, 5 at the time, said to his friend's mum, "No, thanks, I can't eat Smarties [when offered a pack] because they're made by Nestle and they kill babies". It was one way for me to talk about the boycott . It was fine, was a good friend who wasn't offended and was interested, so it wasn't all bad! DS and I had a bit of a chat then about how to word this stuff, and now he handles it better, but now aged 7 and having also spent quite a lot of time in Africa he chooses to follow the boycott himself.

YABU. Nurseries are busy enough without taking into account the particular pet causes of every parent who has a child there.

organic I suppose that what the chap in the WFP said about Zimbabwean vegetables was also ture about Outspan - and there were some who wondered whether the boycott was the Right Thing To Do for that reason. It became - and it's the only word I can find - the Fashionable thing to do.

Well, it's not that they shouldn't be using them, is it? There is no law saying that they shouldn't be using them, so they are well within their rights to use those products.

Just like the general public. They are entitled to sue what they want to use.

So yes, you would be being unreasonable to tell them that!

Andrew yes - causes certainly can become fashionable - good word. But that doesn't make them wrong (or right). Their popularity and following is independent from their rightness :)

(Understanding that a) rightness is subjective and b) probably not a word!)

It is SO hard for people who are not in the middle of something to be able to evaluate it properly. Save the Children and Oxfam, both well respected organisations (whether or not you agree with their general principles), support Baby Milk Action (financially and in principles). This means that two of the world's largest charities for developing countries have evaluated the problem and decided that it's within their remit to fund and promote - which means that it has to be a real problem AND they have to expect results from their financing.

For me, it's easy. I've been there and seen it in person (many times over). :( I don't need to be reassured by the organisations which are behind it of the severity of the problem (and I've just picked two out of thousands internationally).

I feel particularly on trend supporting this boycott

I don't feel particularly on trend.

@ Katie

Who wants to be on a trend that kills babies?

Nestle put a significant amount of resources into persuading the Church of England General Synod to stop boycotting them in 1997 - proof to me that the boycott (particularly by such a high profile establishment as the church) did have an impact.

Since I started boycotting Nestle I have met lots of people that boycott. If everyone that thought "what's the point in a boycott" actually did it, that would be a lot of pounds..

MrsBethel, I have no option but to pay my taxes, it comes out of my salary at source. I think it's rather ridiculous of you to assert that this means I support warmongering

Wannabe - I don't buy from Tesco unless I have absolutely no option. No, I don't buy Coke products. I don't buy Nike. The majority of my clothes come from monsoon because I like their stuff and it fits, that they at least attempt to be a bit more ethical is a plus. I only buy free range meat and I don't buy anything that might have a caged egg/chicken in it. I try to make as many of my purchasing decisions as ethically as I can. I guess this makes me some sort of zealot according to the opinion of a lot of the very apathetic posters on this thread.

Andrew, I have no need of Nestle's processed foods - the small amoutn of processed foods I buy are either Kellogs, Heinz or own brand.

In fact the only item that has caused me significant problem since starting the boycott is condensed milk; the alternatives aren't as good but hey, we just make do with something that's not quite so good.
When millions of people haven't even got enough rice to make it through the day I reckon I can take my millionaire's shortbread being slightly less caramelly

Also, I run a tuckshop at work - there are no Nestle products in it. Has anyone noticed the absence of Aero/Smarties/Kitkat ? No, they have not. There are plenty of alternative products out there - to assert that you "need" to buy nestle products is silly

Ohdear,
It is about whether or not it is reasonable for one person to try to force the entire nursery support their boycott. It really is none of the OP's business if the nursery uses nestle food for the other children, she can say what she wants her child fed, and suggest it to a parent group, but it is unreasonable to demand that the nursery itself feeds other people's children what she wants them to eat.

She's not trying to force the entire nursery to support the boycott. She is merely thinking that she might tell them about the boycott and then let them make their own decision about whether they would prefer to replace it with another brand. I hardly see why that is so outrageous.

Ohdear,

Some of us here aren't apathetic, just realistic. Unless you grow your own food and make your own clothes, all of our consumption choices have an unethical component.

You buy Kelloggs. For some reason they are considered an ethical company, I have no idea why, they make virtually nothing but junk food which is marketed directly and overwhelmingly to young children, thus being a major contributor to the obesity problem.

A friend of mine boycotts Tesco and just goes to his local shops. Unfortunately I had to tell him that those were just fronts for a local mafia and so he was indirectly supporting some very nasty guys instead of a huge corporation.

I think instead of boycotting individual companies the emphasis should be on all of us consuming less of everything.

The best way to put Nestle out of business is to get everyone to stop buying junk food and stuff they don't need.