IBFAN PRESS RELEASE
30 October 2002

On October 29th, 2002, the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) co-organised the Symposium on The United Nations Global Compact and Swiss Business with the Office of the UN Global Compact (UNGC). The Symposium, entitled “Making Global Responsibility Work for Business and Development”, was held in the Palais des Nations and was supported by Nestlé (Note 1). During the Symposium, the CEO of Nestlé, Mr. Peter Brabeck, confirmed that Nestlé is now participating in the UN Global Compact.

`The acceptance by the UN Global Compact of Nestlé’s participation begs the following questions:

• Is the UNGC (and by extension also the Swiss government, signatory of CRC and the International Code) no longer serious in its intent to encourage multinational corporations to engage in socially responsible practices?
• Or instead, can this be seen as undermining compliance with the UN’s international instruments such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Code?
• Who will be the next to participate in the UNGC? Will it be the tobacco companies - or the armaments industry?`

Nestlé and UN instruments to protect infant health

Nestlé has a long-standing record of poor compliance with the 1981 International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes. The International Code was adopted by the World Health Assembly in response to the marketing malpractices of baby food companies which lead to death and poor health outcomes in infants and young children around the world (Note 2).

Monitoring published in 2001 demonstrates once again that Nestlé is responsible for more violations of the marketing requirements than any other company (Note 6). Nestlé also takes the lead in attempting to undermine the implementation of the marketing requirements in national measures.

Nestlé consistently challenges the provisions of the International Code and refuses to acknowledge either the Code’s universality or the fact that it applies to all breastmilk substitutes, and not just to infant formula (Note 3). In November 2000, UNICEF, which assists governments in implementing the Code and Resolutions (see Article 11.1), told a public hearing at the European Parliament into Nestlé malpractice that the "These two principles, universality and the scope including all breastmilk substitutes, cannot be overemphasised given the tendency of the infant feeding industry to attempt to limit the application of the Code." On 12 February 1998, the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, wrote to Nestlé’s CEO, Peter Brabeck, and stated clearly that the International Code applies to all countries.

Breastfeeding, bottle-feeding and child survival

The importance of breastfeeding cannot be overemphasized. WHO and UNICEF estimate that at least 1.5 million infant deaths are caused annually by unsafe artificial feeding (bottle-feeding) and the consequent lack of breastfeeding. These figures are a conservative estimate and do not include the millions of children whose healthy development is compromised by the vicious circle of “bottle-baby disease” followed by malnutrition which in turn causes further sickness and physical and mental impairment. This cycle occurs in developing and industrialised countries. (Note 4)

The Director General of WHO, Dr. Brundtland, and the Executive Director of UNICEF, Ms. Bellamy, were more specific when they stated: “Improved breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices would slash the death toll of children, as up to 60% of childhood deaths are associated with malnutrition” (WHO Press Release, WHO/18, 12 March, 2002).

In May 2001, the World Health Assembly adopted the global public health recommendation of “exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life”, followed by the Global Strategy on Infant and Young Child Feeding in May 2002. The Global Strategy defines the challenge to infant health in these words:

”Malnutrition has been responsible, directly or indirectly, for 60% of the 10.9 million deaths annually among children under five. Well over two-thirds of these deaths, which are often associated with inappropriate feeding practices, occur during the first year of life… Because poor feeding practices are a major threat to social and economic development, they are among the most serious obstacles to attaining and maintaining health that face this age group”.

Best Blue Actor?

At the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, Nestlé received the Best Blue Actor Award for Achievement in Corporate Bluewash, for “Overcoming one of the worst corporate reputations out there and daring to show its face at the United Nations” (Note 5).

Nestlé and the UN Global Compact

The UN Global Compact is underpinned by Nine Universal Principles, based on the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Moreover, the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 24 clearly emphasizes breastfeeding as an important contribution to each and every child’s right to the highest attainable standard of health. The Global Compact Office has been repeatedly informed about the concerns of citizen groups with regard to Nestlé’s unwillingness to comply with these child rights instruments and the International Code. NGOs urged the Global Compact Office not to give legitimacy to a company that causes harm to children worldwide, as documented by 22 years of monitoring by the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN). The Inter-Agency Group on Breastfeeding Monitoring (IGBM) has confirmed the results of IBFAN’s monitoring. The Global Compact Office was also informed that the accumulation of such evidence led in July 2001 to the exclusion of Nestlé from the Financial Times Share Exchange index for socially responsible investment, the FTSE4Good (Note 6).

Ends

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Notes :

1. The Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) recognised “the support of Nestlé in making this event possible” on page 10 of the Programme of the Symposium.

2. The International Code refers to the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes, adopted as an international public health recommendation by governments of the world in 1981, and the ten subsequent, relevant World Health Assembly Resolutions adopted between 1982 and 2002 (full text). These, like the Code, are an expression of the collective will of the World Health Assembly and they clarify and amplify the Code. Although the USA voted against the Code in 1981, it finally signed on in 1994. The World Health Assembly is the highest policy-making body in the field of international public health.

3. Nestlé has set out its position in two recent publications: Nestlé in the developing world and The Nestlé Sustainability Review. IBFAN critique of both these documents, entitled: Nice design, shame about the text: Another PR cover-up can be downloaded as a pdf document.

4. The silent tragedy resulting from “bottle feeding” has been extensively documented in scientific literature (see The Issue section for background information) and is not confined to developing countries. After the deaths and serious illness of infants fed on powdered infant formula contaminated by the Enterobacter sakazakii, the US Food and Drug Administration wrote to all health care professionals on April 11, 2002, to warn that: “ powdered infant formulas are not commercially sterile products”. These precautionary warnings were followed by those of governments in Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg. See IBFAN press release 10 May 2002: “How safe are infant formulas?”.

5. Please visit the website for these Awards: www.earthsummit.biz/awards/blueactor.html

6. For more information on IBFAN’s monitoring see the Code Watch section. For information on the use of IBFAN's monitoring by the FTSE4Good ethical index, see the press release from 13 July 2001. The website of Corpwatch includes an exchange of correspondence between IBFAN and the Global Compact Office, and the report Tangled up in Blue: www.corpwatch.org