Nestlé

Overview

Nestlé is an international food and drink processing company that is headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland. Measured by revenue and other metrics, Nestlé is considered to be the largest publicly held food and drink company in the world. In 2020, Nestlé was reported to have placed top 50th in the Forbes Global 2000, amassing annual sales of over US$1 billion.

“Farine Lactée Henri Nestlé” was founded in 1867 by German-born Swiss confectioner Henri Nestlé. In 1905, “Farine Lactée Henri Nestlé” merged with the “Anglo-Swiss Milk Company”, which was established in 1866 by brothers George and Charles Page, forming Nestlé.

Controversies

Breast milk substitutes

Nestlé has been alledged by the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) distributes free formula samples to hospitals and maternity wards. Moreover, Nestlé used mass-marketing like billboards, as well as the use of sales people dressed as so-called “milk nurses” were sent to visit mothers in hospital and at their home to praise the baby formula and its benefits.

After leaving the hospital, the formula is no longer free, however, the supplementation interferes with lactation, forcing families to buy the formula and be reliant on Nestlé.

In 1973, New Internationalist journal released an article about Nestlé's marketing technique. In 1974, the British non-profit organization War On Want issued a booklet titled The Baby Killer, raising concerns. In combination with court challenges against Nestlé, the widespread controversy led to the launch of the 1977 Nestlé boycott in Minneapolis, USA, by the Infant Formula Action Coalition (INFACT), soon spreading to other Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Europe.

Water

Statement on Water

At the second World Water Forum in 2000, Nestlé persuaded the World Water Council to change its statement so as to reduce access to drinking water from a “right” to a “need”. Chairman of Nestlé Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, later changed his statement, saying in a 2013 interview, “I am the first one to say water is a human right.” In the same interview, he claimed that it was the “primary responsibility of every government” to provide 30 litres of water a day to citizens.

Pollution of plastic bottles

Nestlé publicized advertisements with the intent of promoting that their bottled water was an eco-friendly choice, with a message claiming, “Nestlé Pure Life is a healthy, eco-friendly choice”. In response, a coalition of environmental groups filed a complaint against Nestlé to the Advertising Standards of Canada, stating the claim is not supportable.

In Nestlé 2008 Corporate Citizenship Report, Nestlé themselves admitted that many of their bottles end up in the solid-waste stream, and that most of their bottles are not recycled.

Siphoning of water

Nestlé has sourced and siphoned water from numerous places in North America. One controversy revolves around Arrowhead, a bottled water brand of Nestlé's siphoning water that comes from wells and a spring in Millard Canyon, which is part of a Native American Reservation at the foot of the San Bernardino Mountains in California. In San Bernardino, Nestlé pays the US Forest Service $524 yearly to pump and bottle about 30 million gallons, even during droughts.

Another controversy involves Nestlé sourcing millions of gallons of water from the Erwin well everyday, while the town of Grand River, located on the Six Nations Reservation faces a severe case of lacking access to water, causing many to take issue with the Erwin Well having the potential to serve "as a reliable source of freshwater to the Six Nations Reservation."

Slave and child labor

Nestlé and other large chocolate corporations rely on cocoa suppliers from countries in West Africa like the Ivory Coast, from which numerous reports have revealed the pervasive use of child labor, slavery, and child trafficking.

In findings by Amnesty International, it is alleged children aged 8 to 14 years old work on many of these plantations, without proper safety equipment in an environment that involves hazards like toxic pesticides. In addition, many of these children either drop out of school or work around school hours, with a 14 year old boy stating, “I left school to help my father because he couldn’t do the work anymore.”

Price fixing

After a raid by the Competition Bureau of the offices of Nestlé Canada in 2007, Nestlé executives were discovered to have collaborated with competitors to increase prices. Afterwards, class-action lawsuits were filed for price fixing after the raids, settling for $9 million.

Furthermore, Nestlé was fined 6.86 million euros by the Spanish Audiencia Nacional in February 2024 for creating a cartel with other dairy firms to limit competition when purchasing milk from Spanish farmers from 2000 to 2013. The farmers may now file further lawsuits to recover damages.