Nestle is Nasty

Folks, Nestle is at it again. For many years we have boycotted Nestle products due to the baby milk action protest.  You can read more about the campaign here: http://babymilkaction.org/nestlefree

 

The original boycott began in 1977. Basically, despite advice from the World Health Organisation (WHO) Nestle was aggressively marketing their baby formula in developing countries. They would have women dressed in a white coat to make them look like medical staff visit women who had just given birth and give them free samples of their formula and tell them how healthy it was. The problem is that these new mothers believed it, their breast milk dried up and they were forced to rely on buying ludicrously expensive formula ( it can cost up to a quarter of the household's income to buy formula) which meant they often used less formula than necessary to save money so the babies weren’t get proper nutrition. Also sanitation and access to clean water are a problem in developing countries so baby formula was often mixed with unclean water.

This makes babies die.

UNICEF estimates that a formula-fed child living in disease-ridden and unhygienic conditions is between 6 and 25 times more likely to die of diarrhea and four times more likely to die of pneumonia than a breastfed child.

 Despite pressure from the WHO and charities such as Save the Children they still did not stop, which is why I will not buy their products.

But now they have done it again, only worse. Spiderman was reading the twitter feed of Stephen Fry and he came across a link that told us of their current misdeeds.

From : http://action.sumofus.org/a/nestle-nigella-sativa/15/2/?akid=2049.1596590.Nyhnx0&rd=1&sub=fwd&t=1

 Nigella sativa -- more commonly known as fennel flower -- has been used as a cure-all remedy for over a thousand years. It treats everything from vomiting to fevers to skin diseases, and has been widely available in impoverished communities across the Middle East and Asia.

But now Nestlé is claiming to own it, and filing patent claims around the world to try and take control over the natural cure of the fennel flower and turn it into a costly private drug.

Tell Nestlé: Stop trying to patent a natural cure.

In a paper published last year, Nestlé scientists claimed to “discover” what much of the world has known for millennia: that nigella sativa extract could be used for “nutritional interventions in humans with food allergy”.

But instead of creating an artificial substitute, or fighting to make sure the remedy was widely available, Nestlé is attempting to create a nigella sativa monopoly and gain the ability to sue anyone using it without Nestlé’s permission. Nestlé has filed patent applications -- which are currently pending -- around the world.

Prior to Nestlé's outlandish patent claim, researchers in developing nations such as Egypt and Pakistan had already published studies on the same curative powers Nestlé is claiming as its own. And Nestlé has done this before -- in 2011, it tried to claim credit for using cow’s milk as a laxative, despite the fact that such knowledge had been in Indian medical texts for a thousand years.

Don’t let Nestlé turn a traditional cure into a corporate cash cow.

We know Nestlé doesn’t care about ethics. After all, this is the corporation that poisoned its milk with melamine, purchases cocoa from plantations that use child slave labor, and launched a breast milk substitute campaign in the 1970s that contributed to the suffering and deaths of thousands of babies from poor communities.

But we also know that Nestlé is sensitive to public outcry, and that it's been beaten at the patent game before. If we act fast, we can put enough pressure on Nestlé to get it to drop its patent plans before they harm anyone -- but if we want any chance at affecting Nestlé's decision, we have to speak out now!

I urge you to go the above  link and sign the petition and then make the compassionate choice and stop buying their products because they don’t care about human lives, they care about profit. Then make sure you contact the company and tell them exactly why you will not buy their products. Kick them where it hurts.

 PS here is a link that shows just what products Nestle owns so you can stop buying: http://info.babymilkaction.org/nestleboycottlist