Nestle is in the news again and the news is not good!

For the sake of younger readers this senior citizen will provide a bit of historic background information.  About half a lifetime ago (well… half of my life, anyway) Nestle, the Swiss food manufacturer, was harshly taken to task for aggressively promoting it’s infant formula in third world countries.

Mothers, in response to compelling advertisement or free samples of formula would cease breastfeeding newborns only to discover later that they couldn’t afford to continue purchasing formula. Or, their village well or river proved to be an unhealthy source of water to mix with powdered formula.  Often, when the mothers discovered the down side of the infant formula it was too late for them to resume breastfeeding.

At first Nestle denied responsibility for the women’s choices.  The company hunkered in and attempted to ride out growing international criticism.  In the end, facing a growing boycott of its products, Nestle capitulated and promised to modify their marketing campaign in the developing world.

Nearly three decades have passed since that uproar and today it’s likely that more people associate the name Nestle with hot chocolate mix than with infant formula.  Now comes the newspaper headline, “Nestle in trouble (again!) For promotion of baby milk formula”.

The highly esteemed non-profit Save the Children recently informed Nestle that they, along with a number of other organizations working in Laos, won’t be applying for a huge grant from the company’s “Creating Shared Value Fund.”

This declaration is a significant act of conscience since those non-profits are foregoing an opportunity to participate in a program that offers almost a half million US dollars in grants.  But, such is the growing disgust over Nestlé’s marketing practices.

Save the Children charges that Nestle violates the World Health Organization’s International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes in the following ways:

▪                Public advertising and promotion of breast-milk substitutes.

▪                Promotion in hospitals and health care facilities of breast-milk substitutes

▪                Labels on infant formula imply that they are to be used by infants from birth, thus misleading mothers from exclusive breastfeeding their infants for the first six months of life.

▪                Labels are not translated into the local language (labels in English and Thai are found throughout the country).  Even if the labels are translated into Lao language, the marketing approach of Nestle does not give enough public health consideration to the local fact that the poorest and most vulnerable mothers and families are ethnic, and do not speak or read the Lao language.

▪                Nestle representatives actively visit hospitals, especially pediatric wards and nurseries.

▪                Nestle representatives give different types of incentives to doctors and nurses, such as organizing and funding trips and gifts

▪                Conducting seminars for health workers in which misinformation is given.

▪                Conducting promotions of formula milk at pre-schools in which misinformation is given.

▪                Advertising is promoting unscientific and unsubstantiated claims that formula increases intelligence and enhances immunity. This creates a situation where family income is being spent unnecessarily on formula for infants and young children, keeping households poor.

In my next blog I will post testimony from a physician who has treated children whose malnutrition can be traced to Nestle marketing practices.  Please see our blog for September 8, 2001.