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Nestlé S.A. or
 Société des Produits Nestlé S.A., headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland, 
is not only Switzerland's largest industrial company, but it is also the
 world's largest food and beverage company. With tens of billions of 
sales annually, it is one of the world's ten largest companies. It is 
the world leader in bottled water and coffee and is also one of the 
world's largest baby-food makers. 

					Nestlé USA, a subsidiary of Nestlé S.A, manufactures a wide variety
 of food products from chocolate to frozen dinners to pet food. The 
company also produces personal and health care products. Nestlé USA 
employs 21,000 people and reported sales of $8 billion in 2004. 

					Nestlé Waters, another subsidiary of Nestlé S.A., with its 72 
bottled water brands worldwide, is the largest bottled water company in 
the world and represents 9% of Nestlé’s total sales. Nestlé is the 
largest bottled water company in the United States, where their brands 
have captured more than a 40% market share.

Most importantly, the huge multinational corporation is a noted
 corporate villain. Given the corporation’s record, it is not surprising
 that it was selected as the “World’s Most Unethical Company” by Ethical Consumer Magazine and voted one of “The Ten Worst Corporations of 1989” by Multinational Monitor.
 A detailed listing of all the corporation’s crimes would take up more 
time and space than is available, but below are some of the highlights 
in the corporation’s career of crime.

					Nestlé is perhaps most notorious for its overly aggressive 
marketing of baby formula throughout the developing world. An estimated 
1.5 million infants die each year because they are not breastfed. Mixing
 the formula with unsafe water poses a significant health risk to the 
infants, with these bottle-fed children up to 25 times more likely to 
die as a result of diarrhea than a breastfed child. By the time a child 
is sick, the mother may well have stopped producing her own milk for the
 child. Since 1977 (with a break from 1984-1988), Nestlé has been the 
target of a boycott, now reaching to 20 countries, because of its 
aggressive and immoral marketing of artificial baby milk. Nestlé’s 
tactics are in violation of the World Health Organization's 
International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes and 
contribute to the death and suffering of infants around the world. These
 marketing tactics helped get the corporation voted one of “The Ten 
Worst Corporations of 1989”.

					Nestlé has an appalling record when it comes to labor and human 
rights violations. The company purchases a portion of its cocoa from the
 Ivory Coast, where it has been found that children have been forced or 
tricked into leaving their homes to work as indentured servants on cocoa
 plantations. It is estimated that between 10,000 and 15,000 children 
work on these plantations, some as young as 11 years old.  The 
International Labor Rights Fund has sued Nestlé, Archer Daniels Midland,
 and Cargill in Federal District Court in Los Angeles for involvement in
 the trafficking, torture, and forced labor of children who cultivate 
and harvest cocoa beans that the companies import from Africa. They 
filed suit on behalf of a class of Malian children who were trafficked 
from Mali into the Ivory Coast and forced to work twelve to fourteen 
hours a day with no pay, little food and sleep, and frequent beatings. Source: International Labor Rights Fund and www.responsibleshopper.org 

					Nestlé is among those companies who have chosen to remain 
financially involved in Myanmar (Burma) despite the potential of any 
business to directly or indirectly strengthen the illegal military junta
 there. Source: Burma Forum Los Angeles 

					Nestlé has been involved in extensive union-busting activity in 
Colombia since it first arrived there 50 years ago. In the words of a 
spokesperson for SINALTRAINAL, the Colombian Foodworkers Union, “Nestlé 
converts the factories into camps for the public security forces in 
order to create terror in the community, destroy the unity of the 
workers, and misinform the members of the union, with the goal of 
pitting them against the leaders and destroying the movement. This is 
the policy of Nestlé all over the world.” Since the ‘dirty war’ erupted 
in Colombia in the early 1980s, trade unionists have been on the front 
line of targeted, but unofficial, repression. SINALTRAINAL was formed as
 an industrial union in 1982. According to SINALTRAINAL seven of its 
members working at Nestlé have been assassinated since then. The 
principal perpetrators of such disappearances are the paramilitary death
 squads. Although there is a certain separation between the agents of 
repression and official entities, the links are an open secret. Source: http://www.globalpolicy.org/reform/business/2002/09Nestlé.htm

					In early 2005, Nestlé Purina sold thousands of tons of poisoned 
animal food in Venezuela. The local brands included Dog Chow, Cat Chow, 
Puppy Chow, Fiel, Friskies, Gatsy, K-Nina, Nutriperro, Perrarina and 
Pajarina. Over 500 dogs, cats, birds and cattle died. It was reported 
that it was caused by corn that was stored incorrectly, which lead to a 
proliferation of a fungus with a high quantity of aflatoxin causing 
hepatic problems in the animals that ate the food. In March 2005, the 
National Assembly of Venezuela stated that the company Nestlé Purina was
 responsible for the quality standards and compensation must be paid to 
the owners of the affected animals.

					In the town of São Lourenço, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, 
Nestlé's over-pumping in an historic mineral water park is blamed for 
ruining the healing springs on which tourism in the small town is based.
 In addition, contrary to federal law, Nestlé de-mineralized the water 
to process its Pure Life brand of bottled water. Nestlé built its Pure 
Life bottling plant and its surrounding wall in an area of high risk to 
the aquifer, also contrary to federal law.

					Nestlé’s Ice Mountain bottling facility in Michigan had plans to 
extract 400 gallons of water per minute from Sanctuary Spring in the 
headwaters of the Little Muskegon River in Mecosta County. In a suit 
filed by Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation, Michigan Circuit 
Court Judge Lawrence Root concluded Nestlé’s water operation would 
unlawfully diminish the lakes, streams, and wetlands at issue and 
ordered Nestlé to stop pumping. Nestlé, with the help of Michigan’s 
Department of Environmental Quality, arrogantly circumvented the Judge’s
 order and continued its pumping.

To give proper source credit I am revising:
www.pauldonahue.net/Nestle.html
Feel free to contradict or justify this crap.

Edited by Slartibartfast - July 26 2012 at 14:02

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