Nestlé kills babies

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The 1974 brochure Nestlé kills babies is the German-language modified translation of Mike Muller's report The Baby Killer , which was published in the same year by the English aid organization War on Want . The report was part of an international campaign by development aid groups to raise awareness of the harmful effects of artificial baby food in developing countries and was targeted against Nestlé , the world's largest Swiss- based baby food manufacturer. The brochure was published in Switzerland by the Working Group Third World Bern (AgDW). The AgDW was established in 1969 as a merger of the Church and Society working group of the Protestant university community and the Focus group , a politically active group of theology students . Rudolf Strahm was the head of the working group .

prehistory

The administration of artificial baby food had already been criticized by scientists in previous years and was brought up in 1969 at the United Nations Protein Advisory Group (PAG). The marketing of companies was criticized : “ There is alarming evidence that the sales of infant formula is leading directly to the infant deaths, and that the formula industry's promotional practices are primarily to blame. ”(German:“ There is alarming evidence that the sale of baby food leads directly to the death of babies and that the advertising practices of the baby food industry are mainly responsible. ”) In 1973 the article The Baby Food Tragedy appeared in the international monthly magazine New Internationalist . It included an interview with doctors who denounced the marketing activities of companies and who described Nestlé as particularly aggressive.

Subject of the brochure

The brochure Nestlé Kills Babies covered milk substitutes that Nestlé claimed was “effective in combating infant mortality in developing countries”. According to the AgDW, the substitute products have the opposite effect. Nestlé has been accused of misleading advertising to induce mothers to feed their babies with artificial foods instead of breastfeeding them . International aid organizations had found that the Nestlé product Lactogen in particular was being advertised to mothers in the Third World even if they could breastfeed themselves. The advertising media with which mothers should be encouraged to give their infants the bottle instead of the breast included radio advertising, posters, but also specially trained “milk nurses”. These were employees of the company who dressed like nurses. You have a percentage of the turnover.

According to an analysis by the English journalist Mike Muller from 1974, the lack of money, knowledge of how to deal with artificial baby food and the lack of kitchen equipment to prepare safe, hygienic bottle-fed food were not taken into account . The cost of fuel often prevented the baby bottles from being adequately sterilized , while the price of the powder led to excessive dilution. This creates "a mostly fatal combination of diarrhea , marasmus and oral moniliasis ." In addition, there was dysentery and malnutrition .

Disputes in court

On June 2, 1974, Nestlé sued the Working Group Third World in Bern for defamation. There was a criminal trial at the higher court of the canton of Bern . The title of the brochure was a further reason for Nestlé's complaint on July 2, 1974, to a court in the Canton of Albania for defamation against unknown persons.

The Working Group Third World Bern was represented by two defenders; one of the lawyers was the later Federal Councilor Moritz Leuenberger . In 1976 the members of the group were fined 300 Swiss francs each for defamation in the title of the brochure . But the court declared all substantive allegations against Nestlé to be admissible. The verdict was passed by the Swiss judge Jürg Sollberger . He advised the group to “fundamentally change its advertising methods in developing countries.” Nestlé must admit that the methods of selling baby food in the developing world are “unethical and immoral,” “death or permanent cause mental and physical harm to thousands of children ”, mothers misled by“ saleswomen disguised as nurses ”giving the baby milk shop“ a scientific coating ”.

As an adaptation to the criticism expressed in the report The Baby Killer , Nestlé referred again to the benefits of breastfeeding in 1974 and in 1974 discontinued the use of "milk nurses" in some countries.

Consequences - Nestlé boycott and international agreements

The events surrounding The Baby Killer Report led the critics to found the Infant Formula Action Coalition (INFACT, now Corporate Accountability International ), which boycotted Nestlé on July 4, 1977. In 1979 the World Health Organization called WHO for a hearing. The International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) was founded at the meeting . In 1981 the International Code for the Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes was published by the World Health Assembly (WHA). It obliges the suppliers of baby food to refrain from misleading advertising and other marketing measures. In the same year the Baby Food Action Group was set up in Germany . In 1998 IBFAN received the Right Livelihood Award ( Alternative Nobel Prize ).

The campaign is cited today in consumer sociology as an example "that social movements can intervene on a broad basis against transnational corporations and big banks ."

Text output

Secondary sources on the brochure Nestlé kills babies and the Nestlé boycott

literature

  • Working Group Third World: Export Interests Against Breast Milk: The Deadly Progress Through Baby Food . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1976, ISBN 3-499-14065-9 .
  • Dagmar Zigenis: Bottle children . Documentation. International Women's Information Service. World Council of Churches.
  • Heiko Spitzeck : Moral organizational development: What do companies learn from criticism from non-governmental organizations? Volume 42 of St. Gallen Contributions to Business Ethics. Haupt Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-258-07410-8 . Section "The Discourse Between Nestle And Its Critics".
  • Monica Kalt: Animal moonism in Switzerland in the 1960s and 1970s: from mercy to solidarity. In: Social Strategies , Monographs on Sociology and Social Policy , Volume 45. Peter Lang Verlag, Bern 2010. ISBN 9783034303064

Movie

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heiko Spitzeck , 2008. p. 239
  2. ↑ Swiss Social Archives
  3. ↑ Heiko Spitzeck, 2008. p. 100
  4. ↑ Nestled in controversy . In: New Internationalist magazine
  5. ↑ Heiko Spitzeck, 2008, p. 109
  6. ↑ a b c Little David - The Swiss corporation Nestlé sells its baby food in the third world using methods that can be described as "unethical and immoral" . In: Der Spiegel . No. 27 , 1976 ( online ).
  7. ^ Marianne M. Jennings: Business: Its Legal, Ethical, and Global Environment . Cengage Learning, 2010, ISBN 978-0-538-47054-4 , p. 340
  8. ↑ Heiko Spitzeck, 2008. p. 123
  9. ↑ The presentation is based on: A world empire made of milk and flour - on history ( Memento from July 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). Berne Declaration , 19 September 2005.
  10. ↑ Derrick B. Jelliffe criticized Nestlé's marketing practice as early as 1969 at the conference of the United Nations Protein Advisory Group (PAG) in a widely acclaimed speech with the following words: “There is alarming evidence that the sales of infant formula is leading di-rectly to the infant deaths, and that the formula industry's promotional practices are primarily to blame. Consider how it happens: A poor mother with a new baby is gently urged by "mothercraft" or 'milk' nurses at the hospital in which the baby was born, not to breast-feed her infant. Instead, she is told, she should adopt the modern, scientific infant feeding practice of bottle-feeding formula, the same kind of formula advertised on the radio and on billboards and flyers, with pictures of fat happy babies sitting beside cans of powdered formula - just the way all the better educated mothers did these days. Unaware that the 'nurse' was being paid a commission to sell the formula, the mother takes her 'expert advice', allows her breast milk to dry up and takes the baby home with free bot-tles and nipples and several cans of formula generously provided by the hospital. Alas, she is illiterate and cannot read the instructions that tell her to sterilize the bottles, the nipples, and the water that she mixes with the formula. Even if she could read, how is she to carry out the sterilization procedures on her three-stone stove (fireplace)? But the water supply is contaminated, and soon the baby develops diarrhea. That lowers his ability to absorb nutrients from the formula. Then, of course, the formula given by the hospital rapidly runs out, and she finds that it is very expensive to buy. So she does not buy enough, and extends it with too much water - contaminated water. Now the incant has malnutrition added to his intestinal illness, and between them, he dies of malnutrition and dehydration. In order to make a profit on this hitherto untapped market, the infant formula industry, especially Nestle SA., Has adopted deceptive hard-sell promotional practices (including undermining the mother's confidence in her ability to produce enough milk for her baby) that deliberately disrupt the new mothers' breast-feeding in order to sell their product. That disruption was the cause of that child's death - death by scommerciogenic malnutrition. " Quoted in Heiko Spitzeck , 2008. p. 105
  11. ↑ Heiko Spitzeck, 2008. p. 209
  12. ↑ Bern Higher Court.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) Info-internal . Information, presentations and essays from the Bernese Justice, issue 22, winter 2003.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.jgk.be.ch  
  13. ↑ Monica Kalt: "Nestlé Kills Babies" - Does Nestlé Kill Babies? ( Memento from December 9, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Conference at the University of Basel , 23–25. October 2003.
  14. ^ Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl: 1968–1978: an eventful decade in Switzerland . 2009, p. 188
  15. ^ Berne Declaration: "Nestlé kills babies!" - the story of a campaign ( memento of January 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), September 19, 2005.
  16. ↑ Monica Kalt: Animal Moonism in Switzerland in the 1960s and 1970s . In: Social Strategies , Vol. 45, Monographs on Sociology and Social Policy. Peter Lang Verlag, Bern 2010, Google Books
  17. ↑ Heiko Spitzeck, 2008. p. 101
  18. ^ Felix Spies: The Pyrrhic Victory of Bern . In: Die Zeit , No. 28/1976
  19. ↑ Third World: Breasts instead of pacifiers . In: Der Spiegel . No. 23 , 1981 ( online ).
  20. ↑ Heiko Spitzeck, 2008. p. 175
  21. ^ History of the Campaign . IBFAN; Retrieved December 30, 2009
  22. ↑ Ronald Hitzler , Michaela Pfadenhauer (ed.): Politicized consumption - consumed politics. Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 978-3-531-90311-8 .