(Nearly thirty years ago Nestle faced similar accusations and was confronted with a worldwide boycott of company products).

In 2010, before I learned of Save the Children’s opposition to Nestlé’s practices, I brought home from Laos a can of the company’s coffee creamer to show to friends (People that I knew were old enough to remember the charges leveled against Nestle back in the early eighties). There were things about that can of creamer that I found alarming- things reminiscent of past Nestle abuses.

But… I’m getting ahead of myself.  Here’s some essential background information:

Nestle manufactures a coffee creamer that is sold throughout Laos under the name “Bear Brand.”  This product lacks nutritional value that would qualify it as a substitute for breast milk, or as a food supplement beneficial to infants.  The creamer’s main ingredient is sugar (44%) followed by milk solids and palm oil.

But, as the accompanying photograph shows, the can’s label features an appealing image of a loving mother bear cradling her infant cub.  To my eye, the illustration communicates that the can’s contents should be associated with feeding and nurturing of the young.  (It certainly communicates nothing about using the product as an additive to coffee or tea!)

Unfortunately, in Laos some parents who want to provide their children good nutrition assume that this product is a healthy food for infants.  It is, after all, a product marketed by a wealthy, healthy, western nation whose quality of life is envied throughout the world.  And…there is that charming mother bear nursing her cub.

Mothers buy the creamer, dilute it with water, (often from an unhealthy source) and feed it to their children in the mistaken belief that they are replacing or supplementing breast milk with a superior food.

Physicians I’ve met in rural areas of northern Laos tell me that while treating infants for malnutrition they have discovered that some parents, in an attempt to restore their underweight children to good health, have put them on a diet of diluted creamer.  Ironically, those well-intentioned parents fed their infants a product so inferior to breast milk that the children steadily became ever more malnourished.

One physician submitted this report:

In November 2008, a 6-month-old female infant was admitted to the provincial hospital of Luang Namtha with a 6-day history of watery diarrhoea, anorexia, fever, and underlying severe malnutrition. She was the second adopted child of a Hmong family. The parents are farmers living in a remote area.

They bought 10 cans of the same red label Bear Brand coffee creamer (0.80 $ per can) in May 2008 in her first month of age. The infant was fed coffee creamer and boiled water for the first 3 months, 1 can every 3 days. Relatives had told the parents that this product would be good for children, which was reinforced by the logo of a baby bear drinking milk from the mother bear.

In June 2008, the parents were unable to find cans of this type in the local district market and changed to a slightly cheaper brand (Palace, Daily Foods Co., Thailand, 0.69$) with a written message in Thai language: not to be fed to children under 1 year.

They had not read the message, did not know Thai language, and the mother is illiterate. The seller told them that it could be given to children.

The infant presented with diarrhoea and kwashiorkor and died with complications of severe malnutrition, diarrhoea and infection.

Nestle knows that these misunderstanding are happening.  On the can in my possession the company printed this disclaimer:

“Sweetened Beverage Creamer is not to be used as a breast milk substitute.” (Imprudently, the warning is printed in approximately 8-point type).

In a country in which nearly half of all adult females are illiterate, the warning, lost as it is among text written in English and Thai, surely goes unnoticed by most Lao consumers.

In the end, now matter how many written warnings Nestle provides, the text is far less compelling than the prominent pictorial representation.  The charming image of the mother bear nurturing her fit, young cub trumps every other graphic on the label.

We Help War Victims joins Save the Children and other non-profits worldwide in calling on Nestle to change its marketing practices.

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.

In the video embedded below we show how WHWV came to the aid of a family whose garden was left contaminated by cluster bomblets unearthed in the process of road construction.

A Challenging Day

It would be easy write him off as mentally deficient:

“Head whistles in a cross wind”
“A brain like a BB in a boxcar”
“IQ lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon-rut”

As luck would have it, my video camera was already running when the fellow arrived with bombie in hand and, except for a few indecisive seconds while I debated whether to continue filming or dive for cover, my camera caught the entire drama. Most importantly, I recorded the man’s explanation. After reconstructing his thinking, I’ve decided that his act was not as foolish as it first appeared.

When questioned, the man told us that, over the years, he’s had close encounters with three different bomblets. The first, he took care to observe at a considerable distance. But, with his family’s safety in mind, he felt responsible for destroying the device where it lay. (Readers should remember that villagers in Phongsali have never had any assistance with old ordnance. Everything that America dropped on the province that failed to explode still litters the countryside. The exception, of course, is the ordnance that villagers have themselves detonated on purpose or by accident).

Facing the first bombie that he felt personally responsible to destroy, the guy withdrew to a seemingly safe distance and shot it with his rifle. He succeeded in detonating the bomblet, but was immediately hit in the neck by shrapnel. As a consequence he was disabled for nearly six months.

Had the fellow had the benefit of even introductory risk education he’d have known that bombies, though small, have an effective killing range of 30 meters and have been known to kill bystanders standing 100 meters away. Hence our warning to men with rifles and boys with slingshots: “If you can see it…it can see you”.

The man encountered his second bomblet several years after his near-fatal accident. He immediately ran away from it, no doubt feeling that his earlier injury absolved him of responsibility for its removal or destruction.

So…why, when the fellow encountered a third bomblet, would he pick it up and carry it to us?

The man found that bomblet in a field that he had burnt in anticipation of planting his crops. Most people living in UXO contaminated areas have witnessed bomblets and other old ordnance “cook off” as flames scorch brush-covered fields. Viewed from a safe distance, it’s a thrilling spectacle. (In some parts of Laos slash and burn agriculture might well be renamed “slash and boom”).

Our new friend, like most villagers, assumed that any ordnance still present after the burning must truly be a dud that could be safely handled. (Another essential fact that we share at our safety sessions: abused ordnance doesn’t get safer; it often grows more temperamental).

So… the guy brought to us, not just any random bomblet but a bomblet that had survived intense fire, a device that he mistakenly assumed to be an inert dud.

But, why bother carrying it to us? Better, he thought, than leaving the bomblet in the field where it would surely frighten the next person who happened upon it. Old ordnance doesn’t just wound bodies; unexploded bomblets force people to live in constant fear.

The old guy’s not a quart low; not a few bricks shy of a load. He’s got more than sailboat fuel for brains. He was functioning with admirable intentions but limited knowledge. It’s not his fault that he lives in a province that has been deprived of risk education and humanitarian clearance for nearly forty years.

Concerned children await the demolition of a cluster bomblet that a man carried into the center of the village. Because the device was too dangerous for us to move we had to demolish it where it lay, just a few feet from the front door of a house.

It wasn’t the first time someone has approached us with ordnance in hand, but it was the first time that my video camera was running and I captured the excitement on tape.

We were in a village to discuss the safe removal of some ordnance and I was filming the team’s discussion of how they might remove a fuse from a large, general purpose bomb. Suddenly our priorities changed.

The rest of the story is best communicated on the video embedded here.  Please click on the title below:

Don’t bring that here!

The winning entry was created by the chef at Sticky Fingers, a popular Vientiane restaurant. In place of beef, pork, or chicken, these tacos were made with cricket meat.

During August 2010 the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations held a competition in which chefs at several of Vientiane’s most popular restaurants were challenged to create meals that employed insect protein as the main ingredient. The objective of the event was both to pay tribute to native Lao cuisine and to encourage the use of edible insects in the Lao diet as a way to improve nutrition and food security. “Saep Laai Laai 2010” was the first major food celebration in the Lao PDR that focused on the use of insects as a main element in local and international cuisines.

When judging closed, the FAO announced that the winning restaurant was Sticky Fingers, runner up was Makphet Restaurant and the third place went to the Simply Me Cafe. In an attempt to keep with the crowd here, I sought out the chef at Sticky Fingers to discuss his recipe and to sample the prize-winning entry: Cricket Tacos.

At the height of the cricket harvest, Lao villagers dig in the ground to capture crickets. An ambitious harvester can literally collect crickets by the bucketful.

While the chef was happy to discuss his creation with me he was, at first, pessimistic about my chances of sampling the meal. He explained that crickets were available only seasonally and their harvest had long since ended. Luckily, he found one remaining packet of frozen cricket meat in the restaurant’s freezer and, with its discovery, was eager to prepare a plate of tacos for me.

I’m happy to report, unconditionally, that the tacos were delicious! (Well… perhaps not an unqualified endorsement, since the tacos that I ate were heavily spiced with a fiery salsa that surely masked the natural taste the cricket meat. Was I cowardly? Should I have gone light on the salsa? I can only offer this defense: after three months away from home I was really hungry for Tex/Mex grub.

To give cricket meat a true test, when they are back in season I plan to eat a few prepared as most Lao people cook them: roasted whole on skewers over hot coals and served free of any added seasoning. I’m told to expect, believe it or not, a slight chocolate flavor.

Recipe for ant egg soup

Ant eggs are available year round in Laos and are one of the most popular insect products used in various recipes. They are available fresh in season and either frozen or canned when needed out of season.

The following recipe is for a spicy soup popular among many Lao ethnic groups.

Recipe

Advocates claim that insect farming can provide producers with significant income, and consumers with food that is wholesome and nutritious. Participants in a recent worksop learned the fundamentals of insect nutrition and received "starter kits" that will enable to immediately begin raining insects for personal consumption and sale.

Americans who’ve traveled in Laos will confirm that this is a nation of short people. My best posture, combined with an ambitious, vertebrae-cracking neck-stretch, still leaves me a hair under six feet tall. But, when I stand among residents of a typical Lao village I tower above everyone else- six inches taller than most adults, a full foot taller than many men and women.

The short stature of the Lao people is, no doubt, largely due to genetic factors but nutrition plays a significant role. A 2007 World Food Program (WFP) report estimated that 40 percent of Lao children beginning elementary school are already stunted from malnutrition, one of the worst rates in all of Southeast Asia.

But travelers in Laos don’t need to peruse medical literature to confirm that people here lack proper nutrition. When children bathe next to me in the river or at the village well, I can usually count their every rib; I see shoulder blades protruding from children’s tiny backs like folded angle wings.

One interesting movement gaining traction here is a concerted effort to promote insect farming and consumption. Advocates claim that with proper planning, investment, and consumer education, sustainable insect farming could play a significant role in alleviating chronic malnutrition.

There are about 1,700 edible insect species worldwide but only recently have researchers begun to seriously study their varied nutritional benefits. It’s now known that many species provide an excellent source of protein, fats, carbohydrates, calcium, vitamins and other minerals.

While it takes a fair amount of persuasion (“ I double dog dare you”) to entice the average American to sample any species of insect, at any stage of it’s life cycle, almost all Lao people (one survey pegs the number at 95%) regularly consume insect protein either as a snack or as an ingredient in a more complex recipe.

Lao villagers know the habits of many insect species and take advantage of seasonal events to capture insects while they are at a stage of their life cycle when they are most nutritious and flavorful.

In every corner of Laos, among widely varying ethnic groups, I’ve been offered insects to eat fresh or cooked, as a stand-alone tidbit or as a side dish in a larger meal. And, while working in the countryside, I’ve frequently watched children and adults employ a variety techniques to capture flying, swimming, crawling, or burrowing insects.

Whatever their appearance, whatever mental associations they conjure, this can be said on behalf of the insects as a food source: they are local, abundant, natural, and chemical free.

(Within this blog, see our post for August 3, 2006: “Food From The Sky”.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, in collaboration with the Faculty of Agriculture at Lao National University, has begun sponsoring training classes on edible insect farming and recently established the Edible Insect Farming Demonstration Site at the university’s Nabong Campus.

Last March twenty farmers from Vientiane Province received both practical and theoretical training on how to breed cricket, palm weevil, mealworm and weaver ants. They also received instruction on insect marketing and insect nutritional values.

To enable participating farmers to immediately start their own breeding farms all attendees left with kits that included one breeding tank, thirty kilogram of feed, and a starter colony of edible insects.

Three more training courses will held this year, both at the university demonstration site and at various other locations in the provinces. The next session will train additional farmers; the following two sessions will provide “training of trainers” instruction preparing extension officers who will then disseminate their knowledge to others.

Mosinee resident Jim Harris works in Laos clearing unexploded weapons, such as the cluster bombs he is holding that were dropped by U.S. fighters during the Vietnam era. / Gannett Wisconsin Media File Photo

He’s still teaching, though, and has developed a significant relationship with one D.C. Everest Middle School seventh-grader. As part of his efforts to clear Laos of bombs, Harris often gives presentations in local classrooms. After speaking to students at D.C. Everest Middle School, he impressed them so much that the school’s Leadership Institute raised more than $4,000 by selling lollipops to fund Harris’ efforts, putting the students at the top of the list of donors for the organization.

“We say we’re clearing Laos of bombs, one sucker at a time,” Harris said.

He is grateful for the support, so he wanted to involve them in his work. He began calling one of the student leaders, Jack Collison, 13, of Schofield, to talk about his mission. Harris called him about six times over the past couple of months, often from the field where he was removing bombs.

“When I was small, I thought things like this didn’t really happen,” Collison said. “But when you look at the world, then you see the bad things.”

One of the highlights for Collison was that he got to do the countdown for blowing up a bomb with Harris and his crew via cell phone. Collison heard the explosion, which, of course, was cool.
The incident was significant for Harris, because a Lao boy Collison’s age found the bomb and reported its presence.

“It’s so heartwarming for me to see two kids in wildly different environments, but both are really responsible young men,” he said. Collison is learning more about the world than he imagined, and it’s having an impact.

“I might actually go to Laos one day and do what Mr. Harris does,” he said.

According to leaked US embassy dispatches, David Miliband, who was Britain’s foreign secretary under Labour, approved the use of a loophole to manoeuvre around the ban and allow the US to keep the munitions on British territory.

Unlike Britain, the US had refused to sign up to an international convention that bans the weapons because of the widespread injury they cause to civilians.

The US military asserted that cluster bombs were “legitimate weapons that provide a vital military capability” and wanted to carry on using British bases regardless of the ban.

Whitehall officials proposed that a specially created loophole to grant the US a free hand should be concealed from parliament in case it “complicated or muddied” the MPs’ debate.

Gordon Brown, as prime minister, had swung his political weight in 2008 behind the treaty to ban the use and stockpiling of cluster bombs. Britain therefore signed it, contrary to earlier assurances made by British officials to their US counterparts.

The US had stockpiles of cluster munitions at bases on British soil and intended to keep them, regardless of the treaty.

When the bill to ratify the treaty was going through parliament this year, the then Labour foreign ministers Glenys Kinnock and Chris Bryant repeatedly proclaimed that US cluster munition arsenals would be removed from British territory by the declared deadline of 2013.

But a different picture emerges from a confidential account of a meeting between UK and US officials in May last year.

It shows that the two governments concocted the “concept” of allowing US forces to store their cluster weapons as “temporary exceptions” and on a “case-by-case” basis for specific military operations.

Foreign Office officials “confirmed that the concept was accepted at highest levels of the government, as that idea had been included in the draft letter from minister [David] Miliband to secretary [of state Hillary] Clinton”.

US cluster munitions are permanently stored on ships off the coast of the Diego Garcia airbase in the Indian Ocean, the cables reveal. The base is crucial for US military missions in the Middle East. Diego Garcia, still deemed British territory, has been occupied by the US military since its inhabitants were expelled in the 1960s and 1970s. The British concept of a “temporary exception” to oblige the US does not appear to be envisaged in the treaty. But the British arranged that “any movement of cluster munitions from ships at Diego Garcia to planes there, temporary transit, or use from British territory … would require the temporary exception”.

Nicholas Pickard, head of the Foreign Office’s security policy unit, is quoted as saying: “It would be better for the US government and HMG [the British government] not to reach final agreement on this temporary agreement understanding until after the [treaty] ratification process is completed in parliament, so that they can tell parliamentarians that they have requested the US government to remove its cluster munitions by 2013, without complicating/muddying the debate by having to indicate that this request is open to exceptions.”

Lady Kinnock subsequently promised parliament that there would be no “permanent stockpiles of cluster munitions on UK territory” after the treaty as the US had decided it no longer needed them on British soil.

There is no suggestion that Kinnock or Bryant were aware of a plan to mislead parliament.

Tonight, a Foreign Office spokesman said: “We reject any allegation that the Foreign Office deliberately misled parliament or failed in our obligation to inform parliament. We cannot go into specifics of any leaked documents because we condemn any unauthorised release of classified information.”

David Miliband declined to comment.

Cluster bombs drop large numbers of “bomblets” over a wide area. Many do not explode at the time but can kill long afterwards. The Americans dropped thousands of cluster bombs in Afghanistan and Iraq. Civilians in Vietnam still die from cluster bombs dropped by the US in the 1960s.

The leaked US state department documents reveal American displeasure at the international project launched by Norway to outlaw cluster munitions. An American arms control diplomat, John Rood, privately told the Foreign Office in 2008 that the US disliked this initiative, called the Oslo process. The Americans denounced it as “impractical and unconstructive” and were urging countries not to sign up.

Mariot Leslie, then director general of defence and intelligence in the Foreign Office, reassured him that the British were only taking part as a “tactical manoeuvre” and cluster bombs were “essential to its arsenal”. “The UK is concerned about the impact of the Oslo process on the aftermath of a conflict, foreseeing ‘astronomical bills’ handed out to those who used cluster munitions in the past,” Leslie is recorded as saying.

But two weeks later Brown defied military opposition and went ahead in banning British cluster munitions.

Afghanistan, which had suffered grievous civilian casualties from the continuing war on its territory, also unexpectedly signed up to the treaty in December 2008 “without prior consultation with the US government” and “despite assurances to the contrary from President Karzai”.

Washington’s reaction was to seek to convince the Kabul government that the US could still legally use cluster munitions on Afghan territory under the treaty, even if the Afghan regime itself could not.

Diplomats recommended a “low-profile approach” at “sub-ministerial level … given the political sensitivities in Afghanistan surrounding cluster munitions, as well as air and artillery strikes in general”.