Nestle is an extremely rich and powerful company with a disturbing list of unethical business practices such as the use of slave labor, the use of child labor, the unethical promotion of products, the exploitation of uneducated mothers in third world countries and more. 

The Nestle Company owns tons of different products on the market, including Gerber baby food and baby formula, Pure Life bottled water, Cheerios, KitKat, Smarties, Lean Cuisine frozen food, Stoffer’s frozen food, Garnier products, Maybelline makeup, a collection of different ice cream brands, a collection of different coffee brands, a collection of different perfumes, a collection of different pet food brands and more. 

In 1974, Nestle had its first big scandal. 

Nestle’s baby formula profits started to decline, so they started marketing their formula as a “necessity.”

Nestle even deployed saleswomen dressed in nurse uniforms to give away free samples and gifts in maternity wards to convince mothers that Nestle baby formula was healthier than breast milk. 

These “nurses” were paid on commision, so the more formula they deceptively sold, the more money they made. 

The longer a woman goes without breastfeeding, the harder it becomes for her to lactate, so by the time people started realizing that Nestle was deceiving them, many of the women using Nestle baby formula had stopped producing breast milk, which made them completely reliant on Nestle’s formula. 

Nestle then expanded their marketing and started selling their baby formula to developing countries. 

In many of these countries, clean drinking water is in short supply, so many mothers were using contaminated water to mix Nestle’s formula. 

Babies started getting sick after drinking this contaminated formula and doctors noticed that infant mortality rates and malnutrition were increasing in countries where Nestle’s formula was being sold. 

Around 1977, the Infant Formula Action Coalition called for a boycott of Nestle’s baby formula. 

The boycott spread to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Europe.  

The World Health Organization created a health code in response to the boycott, which Nestle eventually agreed to follow after they continued to lose money. 

In 1998, an African newspaper reported that work on Nestle’s cocoa plantations was being done by enslaved children. 

The U.S. government found that around 15,000 children were working on cocoa and coffee plantations that supplied the Nestle company. 

In response to this, Nestle agreed to take steps to reduce child labor by 70% by 2015. 

Clearly, this response shouldn’t be celebrated, because Nestle shouldn’t have been using slave labor and child labor in the first place. 

In Colombia, a trade union was overseeing conditions at a milk factory that Nestle co-owned, which had ties with a paramilitary group.  

The union was causing disruptions in the factory, which led to rising tensions between the union and the paramilitary group. 

A leading union member overseeing the factory’s conditions, Luciano Romero, realized he was being targeted by the paramilitary group. 

On September 10, 2005, Luciano was kidnapped, tortured and killed by paramilitary members. 

After Luciano’s death, both the Colombian and Swiss government launched investigations into the assasination, which uncovered that Nestle knew Luciano was in danger. 

Before Luciano died, he informed Nestle that he was receiving death threats, but they refused to help him even though Nestle is a global company that was required by international law to protect Luciano. 

Nestle was sued for their involvement in Luciano’s death, but the case was dismissed in 2014. 

The dismissal of this case shows how huge companies, like Nestle, are intentionally too complex to be held accountable for their involvement in these types of things. 

In China in 2008, Nestle used a chemical called melamine in their milk to make it look like it contained more protein than it actually did. 

This deception led to the hospitalization of 54,000 babies in China. 

It doesn’t end here; Nestle has been linked to many other scandals such as the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, Nestle’s Purina Beneful food poisoning around 4,000 dogs, E-coli outbreaks and more. 

People don’t talk enough about how corrupt big corporations like Nestle can become. 

Nestle is an extremely unethical corporation that must be held accountable for its actions.