I wonder if Congress could be lobbied to exclude any formula made by a company that violates the code from the WIC program. Now THAT would certainly get Nestle and the other violators’ attention!

My particular focus is on Nestle’s predatory actions in small, rural communities, where its water bottling operations do a fair amount of damage to communities.

That they’d lie is no surprise; their representative told a Cascade Locks resident that the company had never harmed an aquifer or watershed – despite the fact that a judge in Michigan had decided Nestle was in fact harming and aquifer. Nestle fought hard to maintain its damaging pumping rate, negotiating a reduction only when the judge got fed up and threatened an injunction.

They also sued the tiny town of Fryeburg (ME) in an attempt to force them to permit the building of a 24/7 truck loading station in a residentially zoned area (after losing the one suit and three appeals, their high-priced legal talent finally found the legal loophole they needed), yet their representatives have repeatedly said “there was no lawsuit” or that they simply “protected themselves from a potential lawsuit.”

That’s corporate doublespeak at its worst – as is their astonishing claim that the Nestle formula boycott ended in 1986.

I’m hardly a rabid anti-corporate activist, but when Nestle showed up in my small northern California town and tried to intimidate legal opponents of its proposed water bottling plant by subpoenaing their private financial records, I started investigating the company, and what I saw was not very encouraging.

They are, sadly, about as amoral as their opponents suggest they are, which is a fairly strong statement given the amount of hype typically found on the Internet.

Greg keeps mentioning Nestle’s willingness to “dialogue” as their saving grace, but to be blunt, they’re not engaged in a dialogue; this is damage control, and I’ve seen the results of their “dialogue” firsthand, and the results are unpretty at best, and downright vicious at worst.

Despite the damage control and soothing PR statements, Nestle is not a good company – they deserve the investigation they receive and the condemnation they suffer.

Nestlé is an aggressive company in the way it deals with its competitors, governments and regulators and it sees the boycott as another problem to be managed, investing in PR and saying whatever it thinks it can get away with to divert criticism. It has yet to accept the four-point plan we have put to it for saving infant lives and ending the boycott. With greater pressure it might. But the boycott has achieved and is achieving important changes. It is part of a range of strategies.

A few potted things the boycott and campaign has achieved: The International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes (despite what Nestlé told the bloggers, it opposed the Code – scans of documents from the time are on our site), the Code’s implementation in 70 countries to greater or lesser degrees, breastfeeding rates in countries taking action to stop malpractice increasing (Brazil from median duration 3 months in the 1980s to 10 months today), Nestlé changing its policy on milk nurses and baby pictures on formula, stopping specific cases of malpractice such as Nestlé promoting formula in Botswana as preventing diarrhoea etc. etc.

Sometimes success is measured in terms of things not getting worse. For example, we have had to campaign several times to stop Brazil’s exemplary legislation from being weakened. And 2 years ago helped to stop the regulations in the Philippines being struck down (Nestle USA was involved in attacking WHO and UNICEF in that case).

Nestlé is always bringing in new strategies. Health claims are a recent strategy. In the Philippines it labeled its formula as containing ‘brain building blocks’ and made demonstrably untrue claims about ingredients aiding ‘brain and eye development’ (you can see these on our site). The new regulations should stop this. Watch the UNICEF film from the Philippines to see the impact of such promotion and why these regulations are so necessary:
http://boycottnestle.blogspot.com/2007/05/watch-film-from-philippines-here.html

If you want to see how the campaign can force a change on an immediate issue, I would suggest writing to Nestlé over its strategy of telling mothers its formula ‘protects’ their babies.
http://www.babymilkaction.org/CEM/cemjuly09.html

When a company puts its own profits before the well-being of babies, the boycott gives a financial imperative for changing policies and practices. It also keeps the issue in the public eye – as Nestlé’s Twitter PR disaster demonstrates.

A good way to promote the boycott on your blog or site is using the Nestlé-Free Zone logo and/or banner. Use the code you find on the Nestlé-Free Zone page as this will ensure the banner updates with latest news and links back to that page:
http://www.babymilkaction.org/resources/boycott/nestlefree.html