Is Nestlé a Good World Neighbor?

I have always known that the Nestlé brand was large, although I was not aware of HOW large. In the general information overload, the background noise we all live with now, I had only a vague awareness that, over the decades, they and their companies were subject to many national and international boycotts. In fact, my first Google on this company brought up many, many sites expressing concerns about Nestlé‘s company ethics, involvement in misuse of public water resources, malnutrition, deaths, political manipulation, forced and child labor, etc. So let us explore what people are saying about this very large corporation, why they have and are boycotting its brand, and see what proof there is for it being labeled a “bad global neighbor”.

I am not a well-funded researcher nor a world-renowned expert in many of the matters brought up in this post. Instead, I am relying on many reputable studies and reports from around the world to support my overall thesis that: the larger a company gets, the more corrupt its practices become, and what may have been a good company becomes “corrupted” quickly with size.

—**—

Details on Nestlé, the Company

The Stats

Nestlé is a Swiss, multinational, mainly food and beverage company, that is considered one of the largest in the world. In May 2021 it was considered, by Forbes, the 39th largest company, and THE largest for food and beverages. What makes it so large, is its portfolio diversification, that is, it has gobbled up all or part of many of the everyday brands we all use.

  • ZME Science notes that their products include: baby food, bottled water, breakfast cereals, coffee and tea, confectionery, dairy products, ice cream, frozen food, pet foods and snacks, beverages, and packaged food brands.
  • They have other products as well, from kitchen appliances (Nespresso), to clothing brands (Diesel), to cosmetics (Maybelline).

According to their website, and recent Annual Review, they have been in existence for 150+ years and now hold over 2k brands. They also employ 273k people, across over 186 countries. Corp-Research writes: Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, is one of the most multinational of companies. With more than 450 manufacturing facilities in over 80 countries spread over six continents, the company seems determined to feed the entire human race. It likes to call itself the “world’s leading nutrition, health and wellness company.

Additionally, the company spends lots on lobbying, marketing, media outreach, paper, and website space on how they are improving the environment and have six LEED certifications, sponsor numerous community activities, and support many sustainable projects.

  • In 2019 Nestlé spent 1.3M USD in lobbying efforts (a drop during these COVID times)
  • In 2020, Nestlé spent 2.4B USD in advertising in the USA alone.

Accusations Against Nestlé

SkrierScribbler writes in 2019, that: With unethical business practices such as taking clean drinking water in areas that sorely need it, participating in human trafficking and child labor, and exploiting uneducated mothers in third world countries, Nestle is quite possibly one of the world’s most corrupt corporations.

Manipulation of Vulnerable People:

I remember that in the 1970’s Nestlé was accused of aggressive marketing of baby formula products to lower-economic communities, and less-developed countries, by lying or misleading marketing and advertisements on the nutritional value of its formula products as a replacement for women’s breast milk.

According to The Guardian, Nestle was still being condemned by groups like the Changing Markets Foundation for making misleading claims about its baby formula in 2018. An article in 2018 reports they are, in fact, still following the same bad practices.

Financial Agreements with Dictators

According to ZME Science and Telegraph, Nestlé made a deal with the wife of infamous dictator from Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe, buying 1 million liters of milk a year from a farm seized from its rightful owners even as the country’s agriculture-based economy was collapsing and inflation was reaching unheard of levels.

Price Fixing

2012 Nestlé managers in Canada were taken to court over chocolate price fixing. XMEScience wrote, Nestlé Canada (along with those of Hershey Canada Inc. and Mars Canada Inc.) investigated for price fixing, and were subject to class-action lawsuits, and settled for $9 million, without admitting liability.

Later, in 2013, the WSJ reports that Nestlé cut its baby-formula prices in China following Beijing’s investigation into possible price fixing by foreign companies.

Labor Practices

RT writes that Nestlé is the world’s largest food and beverage company: Nestle says it is committed to enhancing quality of life and contributing to a healthier future. However, it has been dragged through numerous scandals involving slave labor. The multinational is one of the most boycotted corporations in the world, as violations of labor rights have been reported at its factories in different countries.

In fact, Mashed writes that the Nestlé corporation lawyers say they have anti-slavery and anti-child labor policies, but evidence shows they do not enforce them, or outrightly ignores them. Currently, in 2021, the Guardian reports that Nestlé is facing a lawsuit in the USA.

  • Forced Labor: 2021 Nestlé, and some other chocolate manufacturers, were named in a class-action lawsuit; the accusations included knowingly engaging in forced labor.
  • Child Labor: The company was accused of using child labor for cocoa production on West African plantations, and in 2019 WAPO reports that the company cannot guarantee this has stopped despite their efforts.
  • Worker Rights: EthicalConsumer: An October 2019 report alleged that Nestlé had been involved in several alleged workers’ rights abuses. It stated that Nestlé USA management had continually interfered with workers’ organising rights and was involved in anti-union campaigning. This report was produced by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and titled ‘The Double Standard at Work’. 

Food Hazards

2011: Nestlé’s Poland Spring bottled water consumers complained of an unpleasant taste and odor, traced to a bottling plant experiencing elevated level of bacteria in its water source.  

In 2014 it is estimated that thousands of pets were poisoned by Nestlé (Purina) dog and cat food. The cause was adding propylene glycol, and made further complicated by the inclusion of of moldy food into the feed.

Recalls

  • 2008: Chinese milk contamination, hurting hundreds and killing 6, was labeled by WHO (at the time) as the largest food safety incident. Nestlé was part of this.
  • 2009: FDA and CDC Toll House Cookie recalls.
  • 2013: Nestlé recalled European beef products, as they were adulterated with horse meat.

Misleading claims

2007 complaint to the FDA about Nestlé.

Promoting unhealthy foods to children

UK Consumers Association claims that 7 out of the 15 breakfast cereals with the highest levels of sugar, fat, and salt were Nestlé products.

Draining Public Resources

Nestlé Waters, over recent years, are known for being the worlds largest water vendor, tapping water from local water sources and springs that may be taking away from residential water use, even during these times of drought.

Environment + Pollution

Pollution problems were uncovered in the United Kingdom, and then pollution caused by Nestlé also became apparent in China. A 1997 report found that the UK experienced breached water pollution limits 2,152 times in 830 locations by companies that included Cadbury and Nestlé.

Nestlé foods relies on palm oil, to the detriment of the forests and the animals that live in them. In fact, in 2019, Nestle was suspended from the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and forbidden from making claims that they used only sustainable palm oil (via ABCNews).

2020 has shown that Nestlé (and two other companies) continue to be named a top plastic polluters for the third year in a row.

Bad Business Practices

They also appear to have questionable business practices to some. For instance, according to QZ (reporting on France’s anti-trust actions) Nestlé had to be “forced” to stop anti-competitive business practices related to Nespresso pods. Originally, and I have to admit I did own an early Nespresso machine, they owned a “monopoly” on those deeply colorful pods.

Photo by Ollajade Joy Samual.

Baby Formula/Food Manipulation

Focusing on poor populations in “less economically developed countries” (LEDCs), Nestle’s marketing convinced worried mothers to buy and give commercial formula to their infants rather than the more healthy mothers milk they historically relied on. But the catch was two fold, first it overstated its nutritional advantage, and second was that the formula was in powder form, so had to be mixed with water.

Clean water is not available in many countries, and thus they need to boil the water to remove contamination. The advertisements did not focus on that fact, and thus some people write that Nestlé knowingly pushed their product anyway and were responsible for the results.

The International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) states that Nestlé used unethical methods to promote their infant formula to poor mothers in developing countries. IBFAN claims that Nestlé distributes free formula samples to hospitals and maternity wards; after leaving the hospital, the formula is no longer free, but because the supplementation has interfered with lactation, the family must continue to buy the formula (1, 2, 3).

Wikipedia reports that the 2014 film, Tigers is based on the 1997 Pakistan Nestlé infant formula situations.

Child working in Bangladesh. Photo by Simon Reza.

Forced + Child Labor

Chocolate

XMEScience also mentions the 2010 documentary The Dark Side of Chocolate which brought the world’s attention to purchases of cocoa beans from Ivorian plantations that use 12-15 year old child slave labour. The argument given by Nestlé we have heard before, ”it is not us, we have standards that our vendors must adhere to, but we are not responsible to monitor those who we buy from.”

December 2020 WAPO reports, The Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday about whether U.S. chocolate companies should be held responsible for child slavery on the African farms from which they buy most of their cocoa. The issue is told by the Newspapers subtitle: Mars, Nestlé and Hershey pledged nearly two decades ago to stop using cocoa harvested by children. Yet much of the chocolate you buy still starts with child labor.

Coffee

RT also reported that two of the world’s largest coffee companies Nestle and Jacobs Douwe Egberts say beans bought from Brazilian plantations may have been grown using slave labor because they do not know the names of all the plantations that supply them.

Seafood

TP also reports the Nestle company has admitted it discovered forced labor in its seafood supply chains in Thailand.

Reselling Tap + Public Water

The Guardian details the seriousness of this issue that some call a question of ethics, rather than a serious and intentional destruction of our national waterways. What has happened is that the company pays the US Forest Service and U.S. states (municipalities) a minimal amount to drain water from natural sources on federal land. Then they filter and bottle the water in PET plastic to sell back to us for a 2018 profit at $7.8B. Other issues are highlighted by ZMEScience.

  • Nestlé Waters, according to Wikipedia, has 51 distinct brands such as Nestlé Pure Life, Arrowhead, Poland Spring, Deer Park, Ozarka, Zephyrhills, Acqua Panna, San Pellegrino, Perrier, Vittel, Al Manhal and Buxton.
  • In 2009 they bought Brazil‘s Àguas de Santa Barbara in the São Paulo region; and in China bought Dashan Drinks.
  • At the 2000 World Water Forum Nestle pushed for changing access to drinking water from a “right” to a “need.”
  • Nestlé continues to drain aquifers it controls as much as possible, without any regards to sustainable usage or environmental concerns.
  • In the small Pakistani community of Bhati Dilwan, a former village councilor says children are being sickened by filthy water. Who’s to blame? He says it’s bottled water maker Nestlé, which dug a deep well that is depriving locals of potable water.
  • In 2020 Congress started to look into this situation (4).
  • February 2021 Nestlé announced that it had agreed to sell its water brands to One Rock Capital Partners and Metropoulos & Co. This sale includes the spring water and mountain brands in Canada and the US, the purified water brand and the delivery service. The plan did not include the Perrier, S.Pellegrino and Acqua Panna brands (5).

Of course, Nestlé Waters has their own opinion of their work: sees a much different reality. It presents itself as a responsible steward of America’s water and an eco-friendly “healthy hydration” company aiming to save the world’s freshwater supply.

Nestle Continues to be Boycotted

Photo from the EthicalConsumer.

It must be a big deal if there is a Wikipedia page for it, right? Well, type in “Nestle Boycott” and you see they have a page on this topic alone.

  • 1977: A boycott was launched in the USA against the Swiss-based Nestlé corporation.
  • 1980: Wikipedia reports that The boycott expanded into Europe in the early 1980s and was prompted by concern about Nestlé’s “aggressive marketing” of breast milk substitutes, particularly in underdeveloped countries. 
  • 2010: Greenpeace started a campaign against Nestlé over palm oil production and use; which is linked to rainforest destruction in Indonesia, and thus exacerbating global warming.
  • 2013: Wiki notes the Nestlé boycott was coordinated by the International Nestlé Boycott Committee, whose secretariat was the British group Baby Milk Action.
  • 2016: The Council of Canadians, launched another boycott as a response to the company outbidding a small town aiming to secure a long-term water supply through a local well, stressing the need for bottled water industry reform as the country battles drought and depletion of ground water reserves.
  • In 2021 Nestlé sold its North American bottled water business.

My View

It is my firm belief, after reading up on food systems problems and effectiveness, that we need to consider limiting the sizes of Agricultural-related businesses. In other words, with regard to food-related businesses, they can get so large, that their focus on short-term profits makes them unable to be good global neighbors.

And, I believe Nestlé is a company that indeed has grown too big; and that it no longer is able to handle local impacts of the products from brands they own partially or fully. This is shown by the child and slave labor operations in smaller farming or manufacturing processes feeding ingredients to larger manufacturers.

Another evil consequence of becoming too large is the impact that capitalist goals of greed and cash can effect the political climates of small or poor countries. For example, when Nestlé requested immediate payment for loans from Ethiopia, during a severed economic downturn.

They can also sway Western governmental agencies, that sell off water for short-term gains that also have negative longterm effects. Like draining local waters sources, and leaving local communities with less or no water available for future consumption.

—Patty

—**—

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.