Archive site - new site at www.babymilkaction.org

Nestle held a Forum in London today 27 May - broadcast on the internet - about its Creating Shared Value strategy. Nestle portrays itself as a model of ethical behaviour, driven by its values. Yet the claims it makes and reports it produces are very misleading. Baby Milk Action's questions were not posted to the discussion board - read them here.

Updated 22 April 2014

Send an email to Nestle. Nestle promotes its baby milk with claim such as it 'protects' babies and is the 'natural start'. But babies fed on it are more likely to become sick than breastfed babies and, in conditions of poverty, more likely to die.

Greenpeace is reporting that Nestlé has agreed to all of its demands regarding its sourcing of palm oil from suppliers accused of destroying Indonesian rainforest to produce it. Nestlé had earlier resisted calls to change its policies and practices and received many thousands of messages and Greenpeace campaigners dropped in - literally - on its shareholder meeting in Switzerland last April. Now it is saying it will source palm oil from sustainable sources by 2015. This will require careful monitoring; when Nestlé was targeted over child slavery in its cocoa supply chain it promised in 2001 to ensure this had ended within 5 years, but has still not delivered. From our own success in holding Nestlé to account, we know that its Public Relations team will be swinging into action to portray this as 'Nestlé taking the lead' - ignoring the great efforts campaigners have had to go to and using its climb down to divert attention from other concerns about it awful management behaviour.

I've just sent out a press release with the news that the Liberal Democrats have pledged their support to our campaign to protect infant health. We have asked the parties vying for power in the UK General Election to pledge to work for the implementation of the World Health Assembly marketing requirements in the UK and support these minimum standards internationally. The Green Party and Scottish Green Party have also made this pledge. We wrote to all party leaders as part of our Make a Mark in 2010 activities.

Nestlé is the most boycotted company in the UK over the way it pushes baby milk and it is desperate to change the situation. It is reportedly paying celebrities US$10,000 per tweet to say nice things about it on Twitter and is hiring a PR firm to try to improve its image in cyberspace. Today it is sponsoring the London Marathon and is supplying branded Nestlé Pure Life water to runners around the course. We have produced leaflets for runners and others to hand out to use this as an opportunity to show they do not support Nestlé and have produced a press release including the following quote.

I've just posted a new page with a leaflet for the UK General Election campaign. See:

http://info.babymilkaction.org/ukelection2010

We have a boycott list with the main Nestlé brands in the UK. I was just adding a note that Nestlé is in the process of selling its Alcon contact lens solutions business to Novartis. This is due to complete in mid-2010. In the process I remembered I needed to update the link to Nestlé own brands page. We link to it from our boycott list, but Nestlé keeps changing the address of the page in small ways so the link dies (for example, its been changed from Brands.htm to BrandHome.htm). Thank you to everyone who contacted me about the dead link.

You can find our list with the link to Nestlé's latest page at
http://info.babymilkaction.org/nestleboycottlist

The game of 'find the Nestlé's brand page' is not the only one Nestlé likes to play. A new one surfaced when I visited the Annabel Karmel Facebook page today. Unsurprising as it was recruiting PR experts to try to improve its abysmal image in cyberspace. See:
http://boycottnestle.blogspot.com/2010/02/nestle-launches-cyberwar.html 

There are two reasons why Nestlé is the most boycotted company in the UK and one of the four most boycotted companies on the planet (findings of an independent poll conducted by GMIPoll and reported in The Guardian http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/businessinsight/archives/2005/09/01/branded.html).

Because Nestlé is so bad and because you, campaign supporters, are so good.

The decision of children's food author Annabel Karmel, to withdraw from a link-up with Nestlé last month demonstrates this clearly.

A investigative television programme on Channel 4's Dispatches in the UK is reporting on how corporate lobbyists recruit politicians to gain access to Government Ministers and the Chairs of influential Parliamentary committees.

Thousands of copies of our new leaflet have been downloaded, exposing Nestlé's attempts to undermine the boycott over its baby milk marketing and improve its image using its token Fairtrade KitKat product - which involves just 1% of its cocoa purchase. Nestlé is also criticised for failing to deliver on a promise to end child slavery in its cocoa supply chain.

We need to update the leaflet now to include information from Greenpeace's campaign, exposing the source of plam oil in Nestlé products. Greenpeace states on its site today:

We have new evidence which shows that Nestlé - the makers of Kit Kat - are using palm oil produced in areas where the orang-utans' rainforests once grew. Even worse, the company doesn't seem to care.

Greenpeace are organising a protest at Nestlé (UK) HQ today and have released the youtube clip below.