I have added a Boycott Nestlé logo to the blog because these reprobates need to be exposed more. I have been boycotting them for about four years now because of their aggressive marketing strategy in poor countries, which convinces mothers to use Nestlé’s powdered baby milk formula rather than breast-feeding. The result is poorer health and more deaths of babies.

I didn’t realise until this evening that Nestlé, among other companies, also rely on slave labour and enslaved children to harvest their cocoa in the Ivory Coast. The company recently announced it would be launching a fair trade 4-finger Kit Kat, probably to try and attract some good publicity for a change. Mike Brady, Campaigns and Networking Coordinator at Baby Milk Action, said:

Nestlé is already using a Fairtrade mark on a token product representing just 0.02% of its coffee purchase to try to divert criticism of its trading practices, which have been blamed for driving down prices for millions of coffee farmers. While the coffee and cocoa farmers in Fairtrade schemes should benefit, if proper independent audits are done, that provides little comfort to the vast majority of suppliers outside the schemes. Legal action has been taken against Nestlé in the US over its failure to act on child slavery in its cocoa supply chain, despite public claims that it is doing so, and we have already seen it trying to divert this criticism by, for example, sponsoring an event on the abolition of slavery at the Labour Party Conference.

“When Nestlé is on the record as saying that charitable contributions should benefit its shareholders, we should not be too excited by one of the world’s most boycotted companies pursuing something like this. We will continue to include Kit Kats on the list of boycott products and recommend that anyone who is concerned about promoting real change for people in developing countries support the boycott and buy their products from companies with positive business values, not just token initiatives. There are companies whose entire output is Fairtrade certified after all. Nestlé systematically violates baby food marketing standards, undermining breastfeeding and contributing to the needless death and suffering of babies around the world – the changes we have been able to force on Nestlé are because of the boycott and it will continue until Nestlé brings its policies and practices into line.

When the fair trade Kit Kats were announced, Ekklesia reported,

Campaigners have welcomed the news that chocolate giant Nestlé UK will announce on Monday (7 December) that its Kit Kat bars are to be ‘slavery free’ or fairly traded from January 2010.

But Stop the Traffik say the good news is only partial, as this will only apply to their ‘four finger’ product.

‘Two finger’ Kit Kats and all of their other chocolate products “will continue to exploit the chocolate slaves of the Ivory Coast from where Nestlé source most of their cocoa” they said in a statement.

Whilst both the Church of England and the Methodist Church have sought to profit from multi-million pound shareholdings in the company, Stop the Traffik campaigners have put pressure on the big chocolate manufacturers around the world to eradicate the worst forms of child labour on the cocoa farms of Ivory Coast in West Africa where thousands of young children are trafficked, enslaved and abused to harvest the cocoa that makes over a third of the world’s chocolate.

Earlier this year, Cadbury launched fair trade Dairy Milk in the UK and Ireland. As global campaigners continued to demand this policy be applied globally, the Dairy Milk fair-trade certification spread to other parts of the world.

Weeks later Mars capitulated after Stop the Traffik’s “March on Mars” campaign, promising that their Galaxy range will be Rainforest Alliance certified in 2010 with their whole product range traffik free by 2020.

Sources inside the industry say that these changes are directly due to the pressure that Stop the Traffik has exerted at community level, say the campaigners.

Since summer 2009 Stop the Traffik has also turned the heat up on Nestlé – which is says is a global giant with a poor human rights record – and in recent weeks has launched a new and hard-hitting Christmas campaign designed to bring the giant company to task.

So in the meantime, I will keep boycotting Nestlé and I invite you to do the same. It feels good.

You can easily add a logo to your own site.