I like to keep a critical eye on TNCs, and Nestle caught my eye this week during a quick browse of a copy of Ethical Consumer. It appears they're still 'up there' ranking among the world's worst corporations.....
I Remember Nestle being the target of a boycott led by Baby Milk Action when I was in university, back in the mid 1990s, and 25 years on it seems that nothing much has changed – Baby Milk Action is still calling for people to protect breastfeeding by boycotting Nestle products.
Nestle was targeted back then for aggressively marketing its baby milk formula to mothers in developing countries. The thing that stuck in my mind most (from the boycott literature) was the line about Nestle distributing milk formula for free in maternity wards, so mothers got used to using in early on, and as a result they stopped lactating and became dependent on the formula, which wasn’t free after the first few samples!
Nestle of course deny ever having done that, and it’s difficult to verify either truth-claim, but that aside, it seems there’s still good reason to boycott the company even today.
Nestle: Key Stats
- Market cap of $292 bn
- Gross annual profit of $46 billion
- Employees - 308 000
Criticisms of Nestle – why it’s the subject of a boycott
- The main criticism of Nestle is that it Breast milk is best for new born babies, with the World health Organisation estimating that 11% of all child deaths worldwide could be prevented by more mother’s breastfeeding. Nestle’s aggressive marketing of its Baby Milk Formula to new mothers undermines this.
- This can be especially detrimental to infant health in developing countries – as baby milk formula has to be mixed with water which may be unsanitary, and the formula does not contain as many effective nutrients as breast milk, lessening the ability of infants to fight disease.
- This 2017 report from IBFAN outlines how Nestle has actually ‘raised the bar’ (or sunk to a lower level) in its international marketing, by moving to sponsor public health conferences, in breach of WHA guidelines – it does so in developing countries which haven’t yet adopted them.
- Nestle has been accused of benefitting from child labour, as children work on some of the farms which provide the raw materials for some of Nestle’s products.
- It is the world's largest bottled-water producing company, and has campaigned to make water not a right, but a 'need'. It is also believed that its usage of water is responsible for causing droughts in California.
- It has a dubious history on human rights - it has struck trade deals with Mugabe in the past for example.
Some examples of Nestle's 'aggressive marketing'
Nestle’s response
Nestle has engaged in the usual green wash, especially since 2013, painting itself as a company which supports human rights across the world. The most public face of this is the ‘Fair Trade Kit Kat’, now made with fair trade cocoa. However, the problem with this is that Kit Kat only represents less than 3% of Nestle’s annual cocoa purchase, exposing this as a PR stunt rather than a shift in ethics on the part of the company as a whole.
Nestle: bigger fish to fry?
In terms of Corporations doing harm, Nestle isn’t the worst offender, but it is one of the largest food companies out there, and it does produce mostly luxury products that are completely unnecessary and/ or have easily available alternatives, so it’s low hanging fruit: easy to cut out, easy to bring down if you like, and hence worth targeting.
However, the latest reference I could find to Nestle's evil-doings was 2017, so perhaps they're getting better?
In case you want to boycott Nestle
Click here for a list of what to products to boycott, and for how you can spread the word (including links to a PPT presentation and info leaflets, see this link.
Sources
- Baby Milk Action – Nestle Boycott
- Why Nestle is One of the Most Hated Companies in the World
- Nestle – Key Figures
- Yahoo data on Nestle, 2018 figures
- Nestle Wikipedia entry
- Brands
- Nestle Logo
- Nasty
- All other pics from Baby Milk Action.