In a candid interview for the documentary We Feed the World, Nestle Chairman Peter Brabeck makes the astonishing claim that water isn’t a human right. He attacks the idea that nature is good, and says it is a great achievement that humans are now able to resist nature’s dominance. He attacks organic agriculture and says genetic modification is better.

Barack Obama is keeping his promise to lower the sea levels, and he’s starting with the drought- plagued Midwest where Lake Michigan water is being shipped by the boatloads over to China!

By using a little-known loophole in the 2006 Great Lakes Compact, Obama minions are allowing Nestle Company to export precious fresh water out of Lake Michigan to the tune of an estimated $500,000 to $1.8 million per day profit.

By draining the precious jewel of the Great Lakes in the middle of America, our federal water managersare allowing the export of our water out of our country across thousands of miles of oceans into the Asian basin plagued by huge population centers that are suffering from their constant lack of fresh water. How’s that for cutting America down to size?

Nestle’s 2012 underlying sales grew 5.9 percent last year to 92.2 billion Swiss francs ($100.30 billion), in line with a consensus analyst forecast and implying a slight recovery after third-quarter growth of some 5 percent. Yahoo Finance

Nestle is the world’s biggest bottler of water. Brabeck claims – correctly – that water is the most important raw material in the world. However he then goes on to say that privatisation is the best way to ensure fair distribution. He claims that the idea that water is a human right comes from “extremist” NGOs. Water is a foodstuff like any other, and should have a market value.

He believes that the ultimate social responsibility of any Chairman is to make as much profit as possible, so that people will have jobs.

And just to underline what a lovely man he is, he also thinks we should all be working longer and harder.

“I don’t believe that industrialization is necessary in any case for any country… it is machinery that has enabled these nations to exploit others… What is the cause of the present chaos? It is exploitation.” – Mohandas Gandhi

Consequences of water privatisation

The consequences of water privatisation have been devastating on poor communities around the world. In South Africa, where the municipal workers’ union SAMWU fought a long battle against privatisation, there has been substantial research (pdf) about the effects. Water privatisation lead to a massive cholera outbreak in Durban in the year 2000.

The Nestle boycott

Nestle already has a very bad reputation among activists. There has been a boycott call since 1977. This is due to Nestle’s aggressive lobbying to get women to stop breastfeeding – which is free and healthy – and use infant formula (sold by Nestle) instead. Nestle has lobbied governments to tell their health departments to promote formula. In poor countries, this has resulted in the deaths of babies, as women have mixed formula with contaminated water instead of breastfeeding.

Tell Nestle they are wrong – water is a human right

There is Europe-wide campaign to tell the European Commission that water is a human right, and to ask them to enact legislation to ensure this is protected.

If you live in Europe, please Sign the petition here.

Union Solidarity International

In what has become a deadly zero-sum game, Nestlé is trying to convince mothers all over the world to engage in dangerous feeding practices.

“Can a product which requires clean water, good sanitation, adequate family income and a literate parent to follow printed instructions, be properly and safely used in areas where water is contaminated, sewage runs through the streets, poverty is severe and illiteracy is high?”

In 1978 Nestlé admitted, “No”. Sadly when the same question is asked today, the answer remains, “No”.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF about 1.5 million babies die every year because they were not breastfed. In many parts of the world, not breastfeeding means the difference between life and death.

Where water is unsafe, preparing formula means exposing children to the harmful bacteria found in untreated water. This causes many infants to become infected with bacterial diseases, the most feared of which is diarrhoea, which yearly leads to dehydration and death for thousands of infants. Many more millions suffer from infectious diseases and malnutrition, never reaching their full potential because they were not breastfed.

The global decline in breastfeeding and the subsequent ascent of “commerciogenic malnutrition” has been attributed in part to the aggressive marketing of breastmilk substitutes by the babymilk and babyfood industry

To Counteract this dangerous trend, the World Health Assembly ratified an international marketing code 2 designed to protect breastfeeding and ensure the proper use of artificial feeding when necessary.

The International Code imposes strict guidelines that prohibit the promotion of infant formula to the public, the promotion of infant formula through health care systems, direct contact between formula companies and mothers, and ensure proper labels on all products describing the benefits of breastfeeding and the dangers of bottlefeeding (see the International Code page on this website for more information).

Despite the fact that Nestlé has promised to comply with the WHO Marketing Code, the company disposes of large quantities of free formulas to maternity hospitals and birthing centres, distributes free formula to pregnant women and new mothers, misinforms about infant feeding, and tries to entice health care workers with enducements and gifts.

In Bangladesh, Brazil, Mexico, Russia and South Africa, mothers of newborns receive free Nestlé infant formula samples in hospitals. Health care workers receive gifts such as pens, calendars, and desk sets in Chile, Colombia, and Spain, and in Zimbabwe, health care workers receive Christmas hampers from Nestlé. 3.

Nestlé knows that artificial feeding in the poor areas of the world is dangerous. So why do they promote their products there? The awful reality is that every breastfeeding mother represents competition for formula companies. In what has become a deadly zero-sum game, Nestlé is trying to convince mothers all over the world to engage in dangerous feeding practices.

As the world’s largest babyfood company, Nestlé sets the marketing standards for the industry. Currently, rather than setting a good example, it is the single most prolific violator of the International Code. Participants in the Nestlé Boycott refuse to let Nestlé carry on business as usual while they are at the same time endangering the health of millions.

Boycotters refuse to buy any Nestlé products in order to put pressure on the company by creating bad publicity and lowering sales. The Boycott will be promoted and publicized until such time as Nestlé is forced to change its marketing practices and begins to act ethically.

In Fact Canada

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