The Nestlé boycott

[denny]

I just got asked on IRC why I boycott Nestlé products.

It always amazes me that people haven't heard about the Nestle boycott - I knew about it for years before I joined it - so here's the Wikipedia page which explains it at least as well as I could: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott

Nestlé has been accused by supporters of the boycott of unethical methods of promoting infant formula over breast-milk to poor mothers in third world countries. One major issue is the passing out of free powdered formula samples to soon-to-be and currently nursing mothers in the hospitals. After leaving the hospital, these mothers' breasts will have ceased to produce milk due to the substitution of formula feeding for breastfeeding. This forces the continued use of formula, but now at a cost of often 50% of the family's income, which contributes to malnutrition, and under worsened sanitary conditions with contaminated water, often leading to diarrhea. UNICEF alleges this situation results in the deaths of about 1.5 million babies each year.

(My bold. Sources are linked on the Wikipedia page)

To slightly complicate matters, I didn't actually join the boycott because of the baby milk thing, despite how crappy it all is. What really pissed me off was when this story broke in December 2002: Nestlé claims £3.7m from famine-hit Ethiopia.

The multinational coffee corporation, Nestlé, is demanding a $6m (£3.7m) payment from the government of the world's poorest state, Ethiopia, as the country struggles to combat its worst famine for nearly 20 years.

I'd been thinking about joining the boycott for years, but that pushed me over the edge into joining. Nestlé are the biggest food company in the world. Biggest. Ethopia is the world's poorest country (or was at that point). Poorest. The demand was so utterly immoral as to astound even myself. Yes, business is amoral... but there comes a point at which I expect a certain amount of basic humanity from the people who administrate a company, or I shop elsewhere. This incident was when Nestle crossed the line for me personally.

I don't enjoy being part of the boycott... Nestlé make more things that I like than I can actually count, but you can start by listing about half my favourite chocolate bars and about 9/10 of my favourite cereals. They are a huge company, and boycotting their products is not easy. Nevertheless, in my opinion they deserve to lose money, and I'm sufficiently convinced of this that I don't intend to give them any of mine.

Comments

[fellcat.livejournal.com]

They are a huge company, and boycotting their products is not easy.

I am glad that you do so. I do so myself, except for a brief hiatus at college where all the chocolate available was Nestlé, which, in conjunction with a food allergy that forced me to eat salad for almost every lunch and dinner for three months, pretty much forced me to break the boycott temporarily.

I wish that someone else would make soft-caramel-in-chocolate though; Rolos are the one thing I miss.

[blaadyblah.livejournal.com]

Fruit pastilles. I can live without just about everything else, but that one really galls me. I miss my fruit pastilles. :o(

[fellcat.livejournal.com]

M&S do their own, which are larger and more limited in the range of flavours.