May Issue 2010 - Have a break, not a KitKat

Nestlé has never had a good reputation yet, until recently, I had no real idea why. I remember

learning about the Baby Milk horrors in the 1970’s from my liberal year six teacher but had considered it a part of the past. Unfortunately for the world it is far from being a piece of history.

If you were to draw up a list of the top ten contentious and boycotted corporations, Nestlé would be up there with arms manufacturers and insurance companies, but why? It supplies chocolate to millions of people and what can be greater than chocolate? Fair trading and the promotion of

human life maybe?

In the 1970’s Nestlé began selling powdered milk, or baby formula, to the third world. The astounding problem with this was the way in which they went about getting the local population to buy their product. Giving out free samples to mothers, the babies would become used to the formula and would not revert to the far healthier and free breast milk. In a destitute environment wherein the parents could not afford to buy this product that their children were now dependent upon, the babies died. Even if the parents could gather together enough money to continue buying the formula, without proper nutrients found in breast milk, the babies became malnourished.
This eventually came to the attention of the international community which, obviously, declared that it could not continue so laws preventing this method of sale came into effect. As well as this, many activists created a public boycott of Nestlé products in the developed world. However this was forgotten when the news cycle changed and the world moved onto another issue.
In Ghana, today, Nestlé give doctors prescription pads with adverts for the formula on them. People see this as a medical endorsement that this is a good product to buy for your children and do so. How can anyone see this as ethical? Nestlé apparently can.

I could write an entire article on this one crime but I would like to talk about another which has brought Nestlé back into the limelight of controversy. Nestlé uses palm oil in the production of innumerable products, including the Kit-Kat. Palm oil is one of the greatest threats to the environment as countries have destroyed huge swathes of rainforest in order to plant thousands of crops. Madagascar, a country once dense in rainforest, is almost completely bare because its

government found that palm oil was vastly more profitable. The ecological ramifications of deforestation on this scale are catastrophic. Animals such as the Orang-utan are losing their homes.
This endangered species is being wiped out because of money.
Babies have died because of money.

Some of the more cynical people in this world could say that babies die of starvation in African

countries every day. Whole campaigns have been run to save them so why should we give a damn about a few children dying from baby formula?
1.5 million children a year die from the malnourishment that the lack of the expensive and addictive Nestle products brings.
1.5 million people.
This is premeditated murder and it is vile and abhorrent that a mere corporation is still getting away with it.

Nestlé is a corporation which is actually clueless about ethics and the common good. There is a reason that people boycott its products and that Greenpeace saw fit to create a rather disgusting but informative video on the death of orang-utans making your chocolate. If you forget about the environmental and ecological abuses there is still the human rights abuse.

People trusted Nestlé but lost it when they revealed their dark side. People trust their doctors but their doctors give them adverts and free samples of products which are detrimental to

children’s lives. Nestlé have no trust in people and seemingly do not care about their human rights violations and support of environmental destruction.

People need to boycott a company which deserves neither their trust, allegiance nor money. Nestlé, your cover is blown.

Visit www.greenpeace.org/kitkat for

more information