could anyone tell me a bit about, what boycott nestle is all about?

[milkgoddess]

ive just heard some pro bf saying stuff about boycotting nestle but i don't know why?

hmm, where shall we start....

Try reading www.babymilkaction.org.
Basically to cut a long story short, they unethically advertise and provide formula milk in countries where they do not have the facilities to make it up properly, ie.e dirty water, or use too little powder to make it last longer and end up malnourished.
It causes deaths, a lot of them and they still do it.

here is a video from Al-jazeera which gives you an idea of how bf is being undermined in the developing world.

Nestle is the largest marketer of formula in the developing world - a place where many families have little or no access to clean water and very little money with which to buy formula.

here

BTW, Al-jazeera probably made this piece because the Koran states that all babies should be breastfed for 2 yrs.

--kinda like a latter day organisation called the World Health Organisation.

And Nestle are totally ignoring everything the WHO says about advertising etc in these countries.
They wouldn't get away with it quite so easily over here but the still have goodness knows how many products for sale. You'd be amazed at some of the things that are Nestle owned.

As I understand it, it has its roots in a dawning realisation, from the 1950's on, by healthcare professionals, development workers and activists that companies selling baby milk and foods were looking to expand their businesses outside the developed world (principally the US and Northern Europe) with a pretty cavalier attitude to the effect of their marketing practices on infant mortality and family health.

This included marketing formula milk as being 'better' than breast milk, employing sales reps who visited maternity wards and wore nurses' uniforms, and marketing formula milk to communities where basic literacy skills and hygiene facilities are limited, thus putting infant health at risk. This led to the WHO adopting the International Code on the Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes. Some of these practices are less common now, but have been replaced by more subtle tactics, such as companies aiming their marketing at doctors/midwifes and claiming that this is done only for information purposes.

Nestle is only one of these companies but is widely considered to be the worst offender, and has thus been the focus of the boycott. Baby Milk Action and IBFAN's websites will tell you much, much more, or check out Wikipedia.

I can fully understand the reasons for the boycott, but when I worked in an orphanage in the 3rd world (10yrs ago) we contacted Nestle to see if we could get some formula milk to feed our orphans with and Nestle refused! So the boycott as worked to a certain extent. Didn't help us with feeding our babies tho!

And another thing....(gets back on soapbox)

This is not just a social conscience/developing world issue....?Follow-on milk? Growing-up milk ? as examples of products that we have somehow survived without for millennia.....

thankyou for all that info, i find this shocking. i for one am going to also boycott them. to the others on this thread have you decided to boycott them too?

I also read that is cost a fortune in developing countries as a proportion of average income.

just posting a link to all their products as i was thinking only of the obvious things like milky bars !
things to boycott

link here

can someone please confirm for me that, cadburys has no link to any of this, as from now on there be no more, smarties or lion bars for me or my family
even the cat is going to have to change cat food from felix to something else

cadbury's is safe. lol at the cat

nestle make smarties though not cadbury

oh good, been to the shop this am and got the cat some co-op own brand food, the greedy furball scoffed the lot so he wasn't bothered lol

you need to read teh politics of breastfeeding too.. the babymilk action site has a list of nestle products and subsidiaries

some surprising ones on there.. loreal, garnier, body shop, san pellegrino water, all sorts!

not just smarties and nescafe

Yes,w e boycott them. Poor DP was has only recently come on the bandwagon with me, it was just our general shopping that didn't have Nestle in but now he checks when eh buys something.
We were in the hospital after visiting his gran the other day and he was almost crying trying to choose some chocolate, No Yorkies, No munchies, No kitkat chunky

But like lulu said Cadburys are fine, as is mars.
It's things like water I always get caught out on.

aren't fruitshoots made by nestle

no, they are robinsons, which is britvic.

Cadbury is pretty dodgy if you look into it. Especially regarding the deals it made with coca cola.

Proud to boycott....although DH needs watching on the breakfast cereal front!

oh know i didn't know about body shop. is it unreasonable to not boycott bodyshop. they do really nice natural stuff and they don't test on animals.

oops the first know should have been a no

didn't realise i should be giving up maybelline dream mousse either!!

daizydoo: you say "I can fully understand the reasons for the boycott, but when I worked in an orphanage in the 3rd world (10yrs ago) we contacted Nestle to see if we could get some formula milk to feed our orphans with and Nestle refused! So the boycott as worked to a certain extent. Didn't help us with feeding our babies tho!"

It's not ethical to donate branded formula anywhere - I'm sure you could have bought it if you wanted that particular brand. NGOs distribute non-branded formula in crisis situations all over the world, and the way it is distributed is/should be carefully controlled as it can make its way to the black market and be used to undermine breastfeeding outside the (in your case) orphanage.

Tiktok, I totally agree that any formula has to be tightly regulated and there were proceedures in place at the orphanage, but it doesn't really help when you are running an orphanage on next to nothing and have to feed lots of little mouths.

MG,good for you getting even family cat in on the act!