this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
353 points (97.3% liked)
Technology
61300 readers
2520 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Nestle has an extremely safe, risk-averse marketing strategy. In part due to their various scandals, they try really hard to be family friendly and boring.
That said, they are not worse than other food and beverage conglomerates.
child labor: mars & others were also implicated. These companies were most likely unaware of the child labor being used to harvest cocoa. The way it works is there are wholesalers in Africa who buy cocoa from processing facilities who buy fresh cocoa pods from local farms. These wholesalers advertised themselves as being child-labore-free. The farms they buy from were using child labor. This is a problem with capitalism exploiting people in the global south, causing perverse incentives, and with companies having limited insight into the full depth of their supply chains.
water is not a human right: The nestle water exec said the quiet part out loud. But, no beverage company believes water is a human right - they just aren't stupid enough to say that on camera. If they did think it was a human right, they'd be working to ensure universal access to clean water rather than bottling it and shipping it around the world while limiting water access at their extraction points and polluting the water near their factories. Look at what coca cola is doing in mexico - rampant water pollution such that in factory towns. Coke is the only safe drink for folks because the water is contaminated. Nestle is bad, but no worse than coca cola.
infant formula scandal: this occurred in the 1970s and was obviously awful. Every major multinational food and beverage conglomerate has stories like this if you look hard enough - this just happens to be a fucked up series of events that got some major media play.
People online scapegoat Nestle, but continue to buy electronics and clothing made with child labor, tree nuts/soda/and other products known to be harmful to watersheds, and many other products from companies which harm people in the global south. This isn't meant to defend nestle, but to remind everyone that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Nestle is not anywhere close to an uniquely evil company. Not even in its own industry.
Thank you for putting it into perspective a little bit. I still won't buy Nestlé stuff but at least now I'll feel guilty buying anything else lol
Water is a human right. Quoth Article 11, (1) ICESCR:
"food" here can be safely assumed to include "water". "Everyone" means "also people who can't afford shoelaces". There's exactly one country in the world which didn't ratify the ICESCR and it's the US.
Regarding "uniquely evil": Yeah I'm definitely boycotting Chiquita (United Fruit) and Bacardi harder, both are still, effectively, whining about having their slave plantations expropriated. Both aren't exactly hard to do their bananas are more expensive than no-brand organic ones over here, and Bacardi, well there’s plenty of good rum, Bacardi ain't one of them. If you ever make a Cuba Libre with Bacardi I shall explode into tirades.
Oh of course I agree. That's just what the nestle asshole said.
That's good. Boycotts can be effective!