Boycott Nestle

[aloha]

I don't know if anyone else heard the Today programme? Nestle is demanding £6million in compensation from Ethiopia, one of the poorest nations on earth which is facing catastrophic famine. Children are already dying because they have no food. Nestle has been offered over £1million, but is refusing to settle, even thought the company knows what the consequences may be. I thought this might be of interest to anyone who has read about the famine or contributed to famine relief. Personally, I didn't donate to have a greedy, immoral multinational snatch the food from starving children's mouths. Nestle already promote artificial feeding in the third world, contrary to the World Health Organisation's code of marketing. Where drinking water is unsafe, bottle fed babies are up to 25 times more likely to die from diarrhoea. So Nestle profits while babies die. Boycotting this disgusting company means more than never buying Nescafe again (though it's a very good start as it is their flagship product) but also covers many products including Cheerios and Shredded Wheat, Perrier Water, Kit Kats , Yorkie, Felix catfood as well as L'Oreal, Lancome, Garnier, Maybelline and Helena Rubenstein. For more information & a list of Nestle products, go to www.babymilkaction.org.

[Juno]

Re replacement Shreddies, Tesco's Malt Wheaties (?) are nice, as are the Sainsbury's equivalent. But I dread to think who makes them...

Fascinating thread. I managed to make (oops! did I say "make"? I meant "encourage"...) my partner give up Nescafe for Kenco, which is probably just as bad, but she won't drink CafeDirect.

Does anyone ever read the Ethical Consumer? I find it fascinating, but utterly depressing. I can barely leave my house and I'm contributing to someone's oppression somewhere...

[aloha]

There are other fairtrade coffees - got a good one from Tesco! Maybe show her this thread or the Oxfam site that Bossykate's link goes to.

[GeorginaA]

Can't remember whether Nestle made Malt Wheaties - they did seem to make a lot of own branded stuff. I know they used to make the Sainsburys own brand multipack boxes (you know - the mini sizes) and presumably the Tesco equivalents too? So, have a look at that store's multipacks - if they're in there there's a reasonable chance that Nestle make them.

Another own brand Nestle used to make (not sure if they still do) is the own brand pasta for Sainsburys (and I assume Tescos own brand pasta too). Also, own brand peanut butter for a lot of stores. They do (or did?) a lot of catering & hospital food products too, but I can't remember the names of them unfortunately.

Will try and remember some others that aren't on the list above for you, but it was a couple of years ago now so my memory is rather hazy. Sorry!

[Sweetypie]

As I work in PR for another multinational who faced boycotts and had at some point very severe image problems.... trust me it does affect them... especially when brand means so much to them. And I can tell you we had dozens of people working on defending these image problems at HQ + people in every country.... I DO think it affects them to a degree. It is things they would be very happy not to have to deal with... but I also know that most of the employees in our company do not know about how much effort we have to put into this.

[Clarinet60]

I'm sure it affects them. It certainly would if all of us boycotted.

There is an e-joke doing the rounds about starfish washed up on a beach. Thousands of them. A man ran up and down the beach throwing starfish back into the sea, one at a time. He had been doing this for hours and had only stratched the surface of the problem. 'What's the point?', asked a passer-by, 'It won't make any difference.'
In answer, the man took another starfish, chucked it back into the sea and said,
'It made a difference to that one.'

We've been drinking fairtrade coffee for ages. It's yummy.

Down with Nestle and I don't care if they sue me.

[susanmt]

It's not just Nestle when it comes to coffee. I wouldn't drink any non-fairtrade coffee, having met people who work on plantations which are used by Kenco and other coffee producers, where people are not paid nough tp feed theirfamilies but are given no land to cultivate fresh food, nor enough time off to go anywhere but the local (landlord run) market where food id twice the price of the town markets, where death threats for ime off are regular, where female workers and their daughters live in fear of rape, where there is no education provision and children as young as 5 are working in the fields. For what? For our morning cuppa? I try to buy as much fairtrade produce as possible as I am sure this is as much of a problem in the sugar, rice, tea, chocolate etc industries as it is in coffee. And don't even get me started on clothes production! www.cleanclothes.org.uk I think -opens your eyes to the big brands.

[Eulalia]

Out of that huge long list I discovered I have only bought Cheerios recently and that was only because they were reduced. So I must boycott Nestle without evening trying. However today I got some alternative 'cherrios' - Clucks if you are interested - called Bart Simpson No Problemos which are exactly like cheerios and even have some chocolate pieces in them (which ds doesn't actually eat). They are made by Kelloggs.

I'd like to read this thread properly, but been too busy wrapping Christmas presents!

[clucks]

thanks eulalia, will try them as we are all simpsons fans anyway. would like to avoid the chocolate if possible. might check the organic shops too when I get time.

He has refused cheerios and shreddies for the past week, so my son does have a consciounse after all... Hope kelloggs don't start any nasty business, or it'll be quakers.

[titchy]

what an interesting and thoght-proking thread - shall make Nestle boycott one of my many New years resolutions. Weetabix should be added to the list - someone may have already mentioned this. Incidentally my health Visitor recommended I start weaning dd on Weetabix - maybe some Health Visitors need re-educating too?

Interestingly the Guardian website today has an item about Nestle now saying that they will donate all the money Ethiopa gives them to a food aid programme.

So public opintion does make a difference!

[SueW]

Droile - how coincidental. I've just received a copy of the Christmas message from the president of NCT. In it she mentions an inspiring book called Art of Possibility by Ben and Roz Zander which has a story in it very similar to the one you mention.

[Lil]

Have read this interesting thread and would just like to back-up GeorgeA...and ask how many of you talking about boycotting actually used 'babymilk' yourselves?? Because there's going to be as many woman in the 3rd world who have breast feeding problems as here. I get the impression you all think that 'third world women' are 'nearer to nature' and can breast feed better then us western civilised women! It is really patronising. These women must lose many children due to their problems with breast feeding. Formula must have saved many lives. Undoubtedly more than is lost thru' misuse. Do you really think that the mothers out there don't talk to one another? that there's a massive conspiracy killing children that no-one knows about. Wouldn't we notice if formula milk wasn't working for us, and tell our friends (even before the internet!). Really the problem is misuse and ignorance yes, and nestle should do more, but making out nestle as some devil is just mistaking your guilt at our nice lives, and blaming nestle!!

and as Croppy said, if a company is owed 6 million pounds then it is owed 6 millions pounds!! Just because it is big with a high turnover doesn't mean they should be giving money away. Compared with the african women we're talking about we have tons of money, why don't you all give some of yours away .

[Lil]

..and to say that by encouraging mothers to use babymilk, nestle are promoting lifetime brand devotion sounds weak when this thread shows we realise how few brands we eat are actually nestle. No brand recognition here!

[Lucy123]

Lil - see where you're coming from over the baby milk thing. However nobody objects to formula being available in the 3rd world - it's the aggressive marketing (especially handing out sample in hospitals etc.)

Actually I think that formula is over-marketed in the West too. The packs in Spain say something like "breast feeding is best...do not use formula without advice from your pediatrician", but it is sold on the shelves in supermarkets! Many women use formula because they can't breast feed, but many many more use it because of the convenience factor. In Africa though, the water is unsafe and even a low supply of breastmilk and a slightly underweight baby is better than one with life-threatening diorreah.

As for "a company that is owed £6 mil is owed £6 mil" - they aren't owed that really. They're owed a sum in Ethiopian currency which they want converted at 1975 exchange rates. They are owed what the Ethiopian govt has offred (about £1,5 mil)

Anyway I'm very glad Nestle has caved in and decided to donate all of the proceeds from their questionable legal struggle. I will probably still boycott the products except Shreddies. That'll show em.

[sb34]

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[robinw]

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[suedonim]

I've been boycotting Danone for quite a while. Our potable water is supplied by them, which is a bit annoying!

[susanmt]

OOOOhhhhh yes! Hooooray, another boycott! What are their main products then (they do yoghurt don't they? And that calcium enriched water - Activ?) Anything else?

[aloha]

Oh, Lil, what nonsense. Not only do I give my money away to Africa (via various charities) but Nestle are NOT owed £6million (as someone else explained). Also they never lost a penny to Ethiopia, so there is no question of them 'giving money away'. They bought out a company that long ago had one of its subsidiaries nationalised by a long-defunct government in Ethiopia. It bought the company knowing it no longer owned the subsidiary, so I am sure it paid a price that reflected that. It then went through the paper work and thought 'aha! A chance to get even more cash - from very, very poor people! Hooray!'. It is completely immoral, as they now acknowledge by pledging the money to famine relief. So much for boycotts and public opinion counting for nothing, eh? It isn't patronising to see that using formula when most of the users are illiterate and don't have access to clean water is a particular problem. All the experts in the field strongly disagree that the promotion of formula has saved more lives that it has cost. I do tend to believe them.

[robinw]

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[Croppy]

Nestle IS legally entitled to the money as has been said by others and has been upheld by the courts. Also, the company wants the money in order to reinvest in Ethiopia. Without the commitment from the government to International Law they are unwilling to do this which to me looks logical.

I agree with Lil that I think some of the anti-baby milk African thing is patronising. Most of Nestle's sales to Africa are in South Africa where the customers for formula are pretty much like they are here. Lucy123, what on earth is wrong with formula being sold in supermarkets?. Women still have the right to choose not to breastfeed and anyway even as an exclusive breastfeeder I of course used formula from 6 - 12 months to mix with solids.

Most important of all though, Nestle isn't even the biggest seller of infant formula in developing markets.

Personally I am more interested in boycitting those companies who continue to use child labour.

[Croppy]

The following is a Leader from the Spectator. Actually I don't agree with it all but at least it is an alternative view which is very rarely heard.

A Cambridge geography graduate in search of solitude was recently found starving to death in a hikers’ bothy in the Scottish Highlands surrounded by KitKat wrappers. No one from the anti-globalisation lobby has yet blamed the manufacturer of KitKat bars, Nestlé, for causing her death, but perhaps that is just an oversight. Nestlé has been blamed for just about every world nutritional problem. Last week, the company was threatened with an international boycott of its products for daring to demand £3.7 million from the Ethiopian government, in compensation for assets seized by a Marxist government in 1975. ‘This is absurd,’ complained an Oxfam spokesman. ‘This is not about legal rights, it is about moral rights. When 11 million people face famine, exceptions should be made.’

In fact, Nestlé wants the money in order to invest it within Ethiopia, and the world’s most successful food company has a better chance of investing the money wisely than would any government, let alone the grasping, corrupt ones that have brought sub-Saharan Africa to its knees in recent decades. If the principle were to be established that African governments need not bother compensating the owners of nationalised assets, then the Mugabe tendency would have won a famous victory. No company would wish to risk investing in Africa again.

So what? the burger-bashing warriors of the anti-globalisation lobby will say; what could be worse than living under the yoke of Western capitalism? ‘If you drink a cup of coffee a day, it will cost you about £12.50 a year,’ wrote one malcontent to the Guardian last week. ‘Of this the farmer gets 55p, while the coffee company gets £9.31.’ To make such a simplistic breakdown of profits misses the point. Nestlé, like any other company, has to pay the going rate for labour and services wherever it purchases them. And a large proportion of Nestlé’s costs lie where its markets are, in the West. The Ethiopian farmer who receives the 55 pence doesn’t have to pay the exorbitant property prices faced by the lorry driver who brings your jar of coffee on the final leg of its journey from British warehouse to British supermarket. If Nestlé were paying the farmer £9.31 for your annual coffee supplies, he would soon be retired, as bejewelled as Haile Selassie.

As a global company, Nestlé cannot hope to please antiglobal ideologues. For years, Nestlé has been subjected to a boycott in response to its selling formula baby milk in the Third World. Instead of receiving thanks for its efforts towards feeding orphans and children born to sickly mothers, it finds itself accused of trying to bump them off. ‘1.5 million babies a year die because they are not breast-fed,’ claims the pressure-group Baby Milk Action, which organised the Nestlé boycott. Feeding infants formula milk, it goes on to assert, causes 55 per cent of infant deaths from diarrhoeal disease and acute respiratory infections.

Few deny that, ideally, babies should be fed from the breast. But the ideal is not always achievable, especially not in Africa where many mothers still die in childbirth and vast numbers are infected with HIV. If formula milk is not easily available, babies end up being fed on cow’s milk or watery porridge, far more hazardous than carefully formulated milk. Baby Milk Action brushes off the issue of HIV, accusing milk manufacturers of ‘exploiting’ fears of HIV transmission. In fact, the United Nations quite clearly recommends that, so long as water supplies are safe, HIV-infected mothers should avoid breast-feeding.

Baby Milk Action wants formula milk dispensed only by health professionals, emblazoned with health warnings and devoid of anything that could possibly be taken for an advert. The organisation goes on to list circumstances where it claims that Nestlé has broken the World Health Organisation’s international code of marketing of breast-milk substitutes, in spite of the obvious impossibility of keeping to the letter of this pedantic document. The code demands that all instructions be in the mother’s native language, oblivious to the fact that there are thousands of dialects spoken among the world’s needy poor. Using diagrams to demonstrate how to use formula milk is made all but impossible under the code, for the bizarre reason that it forbids pictures of babies to be used on the tin.

For all its menacing claims, Baby Milk Action has failed to explain one thing: why, if formula milk is so lethal, did infant mortality fall rather than soar after the product was introduced in developed countries in the 1860s? The huge popularity of formula milk in the West in the mid-20th century did not prevent the period being one of unprecedented child health.

The only thing standing in the way of Africa making the same transition to low infant-mortality rates is Western ideologues who want to see African people as noble peasants, unsullied by modern commerce. Nestlé should be praised, not boycotted. We should eat our Milky Bars with pride.

[prufrock]

So if Nestle want to use the money to re-invest in Ethiopia, why were (are) they demanding it in USD equivalent at todays fx rate? Can't they accept it in local currency?

[Croppy]

Presumably because taking into account the currency depreciation since 1974, the sum in local currency would be worth very little. Not many modern plants can be built for US$1m, even in Ethiopia, particularly given the high cost of exporting machinery there and employing expats with the necessary skills.

I have a lot of qualms about the way that infant formula is promoted but I just don't understand why Nestle is targeted when it is by no means the worst offender.