Nestle: Wake Up and Smell the Coffee



Steve Coogan: I\'m boycotting Nestle!
At the climax of this years Perrier Awards, broadcast on the 25th August this year, the presenter was interviewing comedian Steve Coogan, who promptly shocked the presenter by announcing his intention to “…boycott Nestle”. As this was a live show the comments could not be edited out. But what was he on about? Well Nestle are the company that own Perrier. Nestle are also a company with a controversial past and present.

Nestle Who?
Nestle, is a food and drink corporation Who supplies a huge chuck of the products sold to UK consumers\' every day. It\'s quite staggering to see the range of brands they own; Rowntrees(makers of Kit Kat, Polo, Aero, After Eight Mints and so on), Lyon’s Maid Ice Cream, Crosse & Blackwell, Sarsons, Spillers, L\'Oreal, Laboratoires Garnier and Lean Cuisine to name but a few. Their annual turnover amounts to tens of billions of dollars and their business extends across continental boundaries.

Nestle Power
To help with the plunder they have amassed a huge amount of political
and social influence - for example in 1999 Nestle USA spent over $1.5 million on political lobbying. Nestle are also part of the European Round
Table, the business forum derided my many including the environmentalist
George Monbiot; \"The European Round Table is no ordinary lobby group.
It has little need to call on governments, for governments call on the round table.\" Further political clout emerged when Nestlé paid for a stall at the Labour Party Conference in October 1998 and became annoyed at a UNICEF stall carrying anti-Nestle information. It wasn\'t long before UNICEF\'s posters were removed. It’s also worth mentioning that the Nestle UK Chief Executive is president of the Food and Drink Federation with access to government ministers. It\'s a pity the opposing view does not have the same access to such resources.

Childhood Hypocrisy
Nestle spend vast sums on covert advertising to children, such as through the \'Kid’s Club Network\' where money given to schools is exchanged for direct marketing to impressionable young minds. A sample task from the Nestle worksheet; \"Carry out a survey of 30 mint consumers to find out what four variants of Polo they find appealing.\" However, there is no Kid’s Club for the child slaves that pick the coca beans used by Nestle. The company does not use fair-trade coca or coffee beans and buys much of its cocoa beans from supplies produced on the Ivory Coast, where it is claimed 90% of plantations use slaves. When this allegation came to light recently, Nestle responded by co-producing a study that showed there was no evidence to support that figure. Not everyone agreed with their conclusion though, and the Daily Express noted \"the study was done without anyone setting foot in Ivory Coast, let alone going looking in coca farms.\"

Genetic Modification
As if that\'s not enough, Nestle foods use Genetically Modified ingredients in their products. This outraged Greenpeace Hong Kong activists so much they continue to plan demonstrations to highlight the issue. Recently two of the activists were arrested for such actions. Nestle Italy was also forced to withdraw \'Alsoy\' infant formula after it was found to contain Genetically Modified Organisms despite Nestle\'s promise not to use GMOs in it. In addition the journalist John Vidal comments on Nestle\'s GMO plans,
\"There\'s still some way to go before you can drink genetically engineered coffee but Nestle, the University of Hawaii (working with Monsanto) and the Hawaii Biotechnology Group Inc have patents on coffee gene sequences that may allow the bush to grow caffeine-free.\"

Baby Deaths
And how could we forget baby milk? This issue has been around for many years and shows no sign of abating. Much has already been written on this issue, so to cut a long story short, Nestle have been selling baby milk substitutes in the developing world. Baby milk substitutes can have a deadly effect in countries where the water supply is not purified. Consequently, bottle-feeding can trigger fatal diseases that breastfeeding does not. UNICEF\'s publication ‘State of the World\'s Children 2001’ states, \"Improved breastfeeding practices and reduction of artificial feeding could save an estimated 1.5 million children a year.\" Baby Milk Action, the Cambridge based pressure group for such issues remark, \"Breastfeeding is the best start in life for a child. The Word Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that one and a half million infants die each year because they are not breastfed. However, despite the proven benefits of breastfeeding, women throughout the world are under pressure to use artificial milks as a result of the unethical marketing practices of the baby food industry.\" Nestle stands accused of violating agreements on the marketing of baby milk, so causing the unnecessary deaths of many babies simply for profit. Of course Nestle denies it is breaking any agreements, and has a massive ongoing PR blitz to counter claim against it, of which @Bristol seems to be part. So Nestle lie about such things? Yes. For example an employee of Nestle Pakistan, Syed Aamar Raza, smashed pretensions of adherence to any marketing codes after seeing babies that had died in hospital as a result of Nestle policy. His allegations were damming, \"It is said that Nestle does not give gifts to doctors, but we did this. It is said we did not make direct contact with mothers, but we held baby shows in clinics, and we used Cerelac samples as a way of striking up conversations to push the milk. The Charter says Nestle does not pay staff by incentives, but my salary revisions signed by Nestle\'s Marketing Manager included incentives. Infant formula received the most points in the scheme.\"

PR Coverup
On it goes as more and more evidence emerges of the Nestle’s activties. Their sponsorship of @Bristol seems to part of the PR-war, after being advised by PR firm Saatchi and Saatchi(the people responsible for the Tories \'demon eyes\' campaign in the 1997 general election) to go on the offensive; not by stopping their bad practice, but by spending money on \'good causes\' to deflect criticism. In such a manner the boss of @Bristol, John Durant, told activists in March this year that Nestle has cleaned up it\'s act. Three months later the Independent newspaper carried a story on a report published that showed that multinational baby food companies; including Nestle; were continuing to break an international code on marketing powdered milk to mothers. Squeaky clean!

Self Serving @Bristol
Plus, it\'s odd how Nestle’s \'good causes\' work serves to provide financial benefits to Nestle itself. Take for example the @Bristol project which Nestle provided sponsorship for, and also acquired the concession to run a Nestle cafe there. Undercover anti-Nestle activists were told by a representative of New Era Ltd,(the company that runs the franchise)how successful the cafe had been, yet rumour has it (unconfirmed!) that @Bristol find them selves in financial trouble. So the question arises; why would a leisure attraction surrender one of it\'s most valuable financial assets to someone else?

Nestle Go Home
They may have accrued a vast pile of financial and political muscle, but they aren\'t all getting it their own way. People have been and continue to speak out against Nestle’s corporate tyranny. As long as the baby milk issue has been in the public consciousness there has been resistance to Nestle. In 1977 the Nestle Boycott was launched and since then resistance has intensified. A typical example would be the events of October 1999, where actions such as building occupations and demonstrations occurred across the UK to highlight Nestle\'s exploitation of the Chiapas region of Mexico. Chiapas is widely known as the homelands of the Zapatista rebels and their charismatic spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos. Even Nestle acknowledged the resistance when in a recent interview the Chief Executive of Nestle UK Peter Blackburn talked of issues surrounding graduate recruitment, ...\"in some universities we\'ve had a rough time when we\'ve gone to make presentations - we\'ve had to close down on a couple of occasions.\" It\'s heart-warming to hear that active morality and resistance are also being found in the younger generation as this news-clip from an activity camp for 11 to 16-year-olds in the UK shows, \"..but the KitKat machine that usually does a roaring trade has attracted spontaneous demonstrations and picketing, and has only just survived the attention of the Woodcraft Folk, the 20,000-strong alternative scouts movement..\" Campaign groups and concerned people the world over continue to pile on the pressure and world-wide resistance to Nestle\'s practices grows.

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Sources
Guardian 21/04/01, 20/7/01
Guardian Editor 21/4/01 p.7
Guardian#1
Guardian#2
Guardian#3
Baby Milk Action
Open Secrets
Independent#1
Eco-Action
@Bristol
Bristol Nestle Resistance
Steve Coogan Info