child murderers

[miriam_e]

Everybody knows the Nestles brand. Not everybody knows of their past reputation of cold disregard for human life. I commonly refer to them as child murderers.

For a long time Nestles would dress its sales representatives as nurses and send them around to the poor villages in Africa to advise people that powdered infant feeding formulas are the modern, Western way of feeding children, and that it was much superior to breast milk. This was, of course a lie. The West has, for some time, been turning away from bottle feeding of babies. Breast feeding has many advantages, and here in the West bottle feeding is now recommended only in special circumstances.

The Nestles sales reps would give away "free" samples to women who had children, well aware that as soon as these poor folk fed it to their children their own supply of milk would dry up, forcing them to buy what they previously provided naturally. Breasts, if not suckled from several times a day cease to produce milk.

These people were not in a position to spend vast amounts of money on milk formula and would tend to make the expensive milk formula last as long as possible, often leading to under-nourished children at one of the most important periods of growth for the child. But even full feedings of artificial feeding formulas can't compete with human breast milk for nourishment. Breast milk changes in concentration as required and contains growth hormones.

The victims often didn't know about safe sterilisation. Water would appear to be safe to drink because it wouldn't make them sick, but they would have been protected from birth from the organisms in the water by the immunising effect of their mothers' milk. She would drink the water, manufacture antibodies against dangerous organisnms, then breast milk would pass on those antibodies to the child to protect them against those organisms too. That vital chain was now broken. Children who were fed formula were no longer being protected or having their immune system trained by their mother. This was especially dangerous if the apparently harmless water was used without boiling first and possibly millions of children became sick and died unnecessarily.

Many people tried to get Nestles to stop, but how do you stop an immoral multinational? When local officials would try to stop them they would simply bribe their way out.

I don't know if they are still doing it, but a company that gets away with such practices is not, in my view, likely to change in a hurry. And it is the fact that they have indulged in such terrible activities that bothers me.

Often when I tell people about this, they shrug their shoulders and say, "Well, avoiding Nestles products is inconvenient and I don't really let moral crusades guide my shopping." But they miss half of the point. Yes it is largely a moral question for me and I won't knowingly contribute to the salaries of the scum who were invloved in such efforts. But it is also a practical matter: if a corporation demonstrates such total disregard for human life, is it safe to use their products? Do you honestly think that a company which happily produces death and misery in vast numbers of children is going to care if their product can cause diabetes or cancer in you? Do you think they will be proactive and avoid such things? Or will they wait for legislation, and then change only after dragging their feet and squeezing the last drop of money from their dangerous product?

It is not just morality, but simple good sense that prevents me buying Nestles products.

Comments

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Good, thoughtful post, though a couple of things I would quibble with.

I deliberately use "child murderers" because it is startling and emotive. It works to get the point across that the people who did that at the time we involved in willful deaths of children.

Breast milk was the only safe thing for those kids to drink. Their mothers' immune systemes primed the kids' immune systems through the milk. The next safest thing to drink was sterilised water -- a rare commodity, and one which left the kids' immune systems 'uneducated' about the bugs in the water. Most dangerous was the normal water which was all too often what was used to make up the infant formula.

When you say that Nestles didn't kill those kids, the water did, you are using the argument a person might after having run someone over in a car, that they didn't kill -- it was the car that did it. The Nestles execs knew what was happening. They could have changed direction but they didn't. When people tried to stop Nestles they ignored it and pursued short-term profits at the expense of their customers.

I would hope that Nestles apologised. I never heard about it... though I can imagine they would not be advertising it widely. Likewise I never heard of any restitution. How do you fix death?

I am not sure what you mean by "evil", but my definition would have to include having a happy hand in the deaths of children for the sake of money. Would an evil entity attempt to make up? Especially if it found its public image tarnished...? Perhaps. How do you tell the difference between a group that has come to their senses and one that is making a cynical ploy?

Nestles aren't quite like any company. There are many that actually take great care not to hurt their customers. Unfortunately there are some who do hurt their customers. Nestles did that. I hope they learned a lesson that you damage your current or future customers at your own peril... maybe they learned... but I gotta say I find it a bit hard to believe when I see the stuff they peddle to Australian kids today. They and a number of similar companies are pushing foods that are causing an epidemic of overweight diabetes-prone children.