estlé
is being prosecuted in India for violating that country's infant
food labelling laws and not putting warnings about possible dangers
of using powdered artificial feeding in Hindi. It is sending free
supplies to hospitals in the Kunming province of China despite
regulations prohibiting these activities in both countries. At
the same time it is working hard to polish its image and create
distance between itself and sick, dehydrated, and dying babies.
Nestlé is indeed eager to make itself look good. Playing Santa Claus to children's charities has been the strategy since the corporate image makers Ogilvy and Mather recommended it get involved. Back in 1989, sullied by corporate scandals, the target of the most successful global boycott ever, and mucked by its unwillingness to comply with the International Code, Nestlé desperately needed a make over. Ogilvy and Mather crafted a strategy of various "do good" activities and even recommended infiltration of boycotting organizations!
"...if your lives were as embittered as mine is, by seeing day after day, this massacre of the innocents by unsuitable feeding, then I believe you would feel as I do that misguided propaganda on infant feeding should be punished as the most criminal form of sedition, and that these deaths should be regarded as murder." --Dr. Cicely Williams, 1939
The cover up is costly to Nestlé. In Canada alone Nestlé has launched into sponsoring children's hot lines, Santa Claus parades, Kid's walks and circuses (which double as advertising media). In 1994 Nestlé thought it had a coup when the Conservative government handed over the International Year of the Family to such eminent corporate sponsors as Labatt, McMillan Bloedel, the Royal Bank and Nestlé, leading Vancouver Sun reporter, Alicia Priest, to note that "the Year of the International Family seems to have landed in the lap of a dysfunctional "family".
Nestlé has aligned itself with the "wholesome" Walt Disney Company. At Florida's Disney World, there is a very strong Nestlé presence at the food outlets, and signs in the washrooms invite guests to take advantage of free Good Start formula.
Lately Nestlé has even taken to giving itself merit awards.
In the UK Nestlé is spending increasingly more at last count over £1 million mainly to children's charities. When asked why the donations were increasing, Peter Anderson of Public Relations Nestlé UK responded, "because a lot of people think we`re killing babies in the third world."
Why doesn't Nestlé stop playing with the cosmetics and make the substantive changes that value children's lives rather than the bottom line? It certainly has the resources (over $1 billion is sucked out of the Canadian economy annually) to put in place ethical and safe marketing practices.
Read more about Nestlé's CEO Helmut Maucher: In the Dock, New Internationalist, January, 1996.