I don't often label the world in black and white terms; but I'll make an exception for a corporation I've been reading about, namely the big, bad, ugly Nestle. I remember as a kid saving wrappers from a variety of Nestle products to send in to get soundtracks to all of my favorite Disney movies, because Nestle and Disney apparently have some type of connection. I used to drink a lot of Nestle hot chocolate and their cute little logo of the mother bird bringing worms to her baby birds in a nest seems endearing. But as I was doing research for my breastfeeding class today, I realized that Nestle is far from endearing; they seem to be a very sinister, and dare I say it, evil corporation.
Nestle markets their baby formula the most intensely in the poorest of the world's countries; places where feeding babies formula not only isn't the most optimal food, but is also downright dangerous, because mothers have to use village well water to mix the formula, and often don't have the understanding to boil it first, so they introduce dangerous bacteria to their baby's digestive tract through the formula they give them, leading to often deadly diarrhea, dehydration and malnutrition. Since the labels on the containers are often in English, the mothers can't read them either (even if they are in the local language, many women around the world can't read, period,) so they don't know how much formula to water they should be giving, and since formula is very expensive for them, they often "water it down." On top of that, is the dangerous leaky gut syndrome; a condition caused by switching a baby back and forth between breastfeeding and bottle feeding, common in poor countries, where mothers have been lead to believe their breast milk isn't enough for their babies, that they need to "supplement" with the expensive formula. (I've heard doctors in the US say the same thing, come to think of it.) Anyway, this causes an inflammation in the baby's gut, which makes it easier for the baby to contract HIV from his or her mother if she carries the virus. Some of the countries where Nestle has done the most advertising also happen to be the countries where there are the most mothers with HIV, so obviously, lots of babies are getting HIV due to being partially formula fed and partially breast fed. One of my favorite countries in the world, Malawi, has a combination of all of these problems; Nestle has been hard at work there for the past fifty or so years, and because of this, they have successfully convinced many Malawian mothers that their breast milk isn't enough, and that they must purchase Nestle formula to give to their babies as well. Because of high HIV rates, dirty well water, dirty bottles (also because of dirty well water,) etc, the infant mortality rate in Malawi is extremely high. I blame Nestle for a lot of this.
So what do we do to show Nestle how terrible we think their ad campaigns and company policies are? How do we tell them we don't want more babies to die so that they can make millions? Well, there are countless websites out there with forms to fill out which will be sent to Nestle that you can put your viewpoints into. But even more effective, in my option, in this day and age of companies going under due to lack of consumer spending, is the good old fashioned boycott. Maybe if we can get enough people to join in, Nestle will be one of the corporations to fold, which could, in the long run, save babies in the developing world.
Common products made by Nestle (for a complete list, go to www.thirdworldtraverler.com/Boycotts/Nestle_boycott.html):
1) Kit Kat
2) Smarties
3) Baby Ruth
4) Bit O Honey
5) Butterfingers (I'm thinking we should ask the producers of the Simpsons to stop promoting this candy bar on their show as well...)
6) Life Savers
7) Milky Bar
8) Chocolate Raisins/Peanuts
9) Crunch Ice Cream
10) Drumstick
11) Haagen Dazs Ice Cream
12) Yoplait yogurt
13) Poland Spring water (also bottled out from under land in Maine where local people don't want them...doubly evil)
14) Stouffers
15) Lean Cuisine
16) Nestle baking cocoa
17) Nestle cooking chocolate
18) L'Oreal products
19) Lancome products
20) Friskies
21) Fancy Feast
22) Nestea
23) Carnation Instant Breakfasts
24) Nestle also has marketing agreements with Nabisco, Walt Disney, Movenpick, Ault Foods, and Coca Cola (which, again, is evil for other reasons; namely taking water away from Indian farmers...)
So I urge you to boycott these brands! Write to Nestle! Do your own research! Tell family and friends!
Love ya,
Carrot
Is Nestly still doing this stuff? This was old news 20 years ago. And people were trying to organize boycotts back then too.
Nestle apparently hasn't changed their ways much. Anything for the all-powerful buck.
Love ya,
Carrot
I guess old fashioned boycotts don't count for much.
Truth be told, I am unwilling to give up butterfingers and a few of the other things on the list.
Africa is screwed anyway due to over-population and that is not Nestle's fault.
You could say 'Africa is screwed anyway due to overpopulation' because Nestle promotes their baby food as being good for the children, then playing a role in their deaths as the mothers use the baby formula provided in an attempt to be 'good mothers'.
You might also want to say America is far more 'screwed' than Africa with people who thinking in ways similar to you. Do you also blame farm animals for illnesses caused by their meat when it's really the farmers using too many antibiotics creating superbacterias and feeding them animal parts causing the spread of brain-wasting diseases? Perhaps rather than the animals more blame should be put on corporations that don't worry or care about the cleanliness of their processing plants? A break-out of a disease on even one farm leads to millions of animals being destroyed to stop the spread of a disease they may or may not have as well as potentially contaminated meat being pulled from shelves. If corporations were more responsible, not pressuring those who rely on them pre or post-product production maybe everyone would be happily not screwed, or maybe I'm just a cynical idealist.
Nestle is certainly to blame for at least part of the mess in Africa, and if they're not willing to change the way they're operating there when their impact is obvious they should certainly get no business from anyone.
I'm sure people will get over the void left by their absent Butterfingers.
I'm sure people will get over the void left by their absent Butterfingers.
I'm pretty sure they won't have to. Butterfingers will be around for a long time.
Nestle is do doubt part of the problem in Africa. The far bigger problem is the African people and their governments. Boycott Nestle all you want. I'm not going to join you. Africa is horribly overpopulated and the best thing that can happen to that place is for less babies to make it to child bearing age. The only thing that will save Africa is cultural shift that causes Africans to have less children and the only way cultural shift happens is pain. We need to quit bailing them out and let the pain happen so their culture can evolve into something sustainable.
Your comments about the meat industry are uninformed. For example, the practice of feeding back meat products ended years ago. It was outlawed as soon as people realized it spread disease. There has been no real problem with super bacterias in the meat industry. (That has been much more of a problem in human hospitals) Mass scale animal slaughters have been rare and they have mainly been in response to diseases like hoof and mouth that have long been (well before the age of anti-biotics) extremely virulent. The slaughters have been necessary to stamp out these diseases so that they don't become endemnic like they are in some parts of the world (South American).
Do you have any proof that the high infant mortality rate is caused by nestle, and not just correlating with their marketing? I've heard that a lot of this was hyperbole or just plain lying.