No — Nestle didn’t change their ways due to my costumed protest earlier this year. Nestle’s product line remains adamnantly fair trade chocolate-less: “A Nestlé spokeswoman said it had no plans to bring out its own fair-trade chocolate products.”
But this megacorp, often-boycotted for — among other things — using child labor to make its choco bars, has gotten into the fair trade choco biz through a weirdity in the way corporations work these days.
From The Guardian: “Nestlé will this week acquire a stake in a leading independent British supplier of fair-trade chocolate as part of L’Oréal’s purchase of Body Shop.”
Nestle owns more than a quarter of L’Oreal, which is buying Body Shop, which owns 14% of Day Chocolate Company, which makes Divine chocolate, Dubble bars, and Co-operative Group‘s brand of fair trade chocolate.
Writes the Guardian: “Now experts in ethical trading are watching how Nestlé will use its muscle in the fair-trade chocolate sector.” The Day Chocolate Company says it doesn’t know what’ll happen, and the Co-operative Group, Day’s largest customer, won’t comment as of yet.
These chocolate products are just in the UK, so part-Nestle-owned fair trade chocos won’t be in the US anytime soon, as far as I can tell…
Update, 7/13/06: Nestle’s now gotten outta fair trade chocolate.
What a story eh? Nestle partially own the company behind the official Comic Relief chocolate bar that raises money to alleviate poverty and suffering in the Third World. Oh the irony.
This is all great stuff as it forces us all to get to grips with what is and is not ethical and what our motivations really are.
Will post about it this week for sure. My position? This can only be a good thing for ethical consumerism regardless of the bad taste it leaves in our mouths.
More to follow on my blog this week.
Namaste
Al
Comment by Al — May 29, 2006 @ 1:40 pm
V. odd how all of this is turning out… I’ve already left the Body Shop for greener body care products, though that really had more to do with the toxicity levels on the Body Shop’s products. In any case, the weirdity’s almost enough to make me eschew public companies altogether –
Comment by Siel — May 31, 2006 @ 7:23 pm
But what is to be remembered is that if Nestle really cared about the developing world, it would stop contribuiting to the deaths of third world infants by glamourising “Western Style” bottle feeding.
Comment by Mai Emessiri 12 — June 4, 2006 @ 6:25 am
tell me about the Jenny Craig buy-out.
Comment by jill gillam — July 15, 2006 @ 2:46 pm