Boycott Nestlé

- by Goldfinch

Every 30 seconds a baby in the Third World dies from unsafe bottle-feeding.

Nestlé uses deception and illegal marketing tactics to trap mothers into bottle-feeding their children unnecessarily - ultimately leading to death in many cases.

How is Nestlé responsible for these deaths?

• Nestlé provides free formula milk to maternity hospitals with the intent of getting newborns on the bottle rather than letting them get breastfed
• They send sales reps to these hospitals, sponsor health workers to endorse their products, misinforming (e.g. telling the mother she is unable to breastfeed for some false reason), and even sponsoring the hospitals themselves.
• As a result, babies are unable to suckle from their mother anymore and breast milk supplies then dry up. The baby is now dependent on the bottle.
• After leaving the hospital, the parents must purchase the milk themselves, which often costs over 50% of the family's income.
• The rest of the family then suffers from malnutrition
• To save costs, parents often over-dilute the formula powder, leading to the baby being malnourished.
• The water used to dilute the milk is often contaminated, leading to diarrhoea, malnutrition and often death.

NESTLÉ KNOW THAT BREASTFEEDING IS THE BEST WAY TO FEED A BABY BUT CONTINUE TO PUT PROFIT BEFORE LIFE

What they're doing is not only inhumane but also illegal!

Nestlé are in breach of a World Health Organisation Code that, in essence, states that baby food companies must not advertise or promote, in any way, food for babies under six months old.

A report by the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN), Breaking the Rules, Stretching the Rules, was compiled in 2001 and published violators of this code. Nestlé took up more pages than any other company in this document. Most of the reports on Nestlé had to be written in summary form, so numerous are the violations they are committing. In fact, Nestlé's violations were too many to list.

With the largest share in the baby food market, Nestlé are wilfully contributing to a worldwide death toll of 1.5 million babies per year, as a result of dependency on formula milk.

A Tragic Case

"Use my picture if it will help," said this mother
at the Children's Hospital, Islamabad, Pakistan. Photo: UNICEF.

The photograph above tells the tragic story of the fatalities that occur due to unsafe bottle-feeding. The babies are twins: the child with the bottle is a girl - she died the day after this photograph was taken - but her brother was breastfed and thrived.

The mother was told that she would not have enough milk for both children, and so she breasted her son and bottle-fed her daughter. But she would almost certainly have been able to feed both her babies, since the more a baby suckles, the more milk is produced.

Story extracted from: www.ibfan.org/english/issue/overview01.html

How Can You Help?

The easiest way to hurt Nestlé is to boycott all of their products (see box below for a list).

"Every time a customer goes into a store and makes a conscious decision not to buy one of our products, it hurts."

-A Nestlé Manager in Canada.

Write to or e-mail Nestlé to let them know how you feel about their unethical record and to notify them that you are boycotting their products and persuading others to do so.

Download and print the leaflet and distribute it to as many people as possible, such as at your school, college or workplace. You could also try to dissuade local shops from selling Nestlé products. It's worth a try!

© 2003-2005 Goldfinch