Unicef Nestle Code - Case Study

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The Impacts of the Nestle Boycott: A Case Study A worldwide event that occurred in the 70s was the boycott against the Swiss corporation, Nestle. Trust is “a firm belief or confidence in the honesty, integrity, reliability, and justice” of someone or something (Singh, Daar, Singer 2). The global health community places their trust in many transnational corporations everyday to ensure their products they are producing meet health standards and give us our required nutrients. However, the global health communities’ trust was broken in the 1970s when the number of sick and malnourished babies took a turn for the worse. Post explains that this was proven to be a direct correlation with the increase in bottle-feeding and the decrease in breastfeeding (116). In the eyes of the public the companies that sold the breast-milk substitute were to blame. The main target was Nestle, the industry market leader of baby food, “which controlled 40% of the worldwide market for baby food, and active in 80 countries” (Lapland 2). This led to the start of one of the largest boycotts, the Nestle boycott, which began in 1977 and still continues today in some areas around the world. However a positive that came out of this was the establishment of the WHO/UNICEF International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes. Although both positives and negatives came out of this event, it is still seen as a global issue of health. It mainly occurred and still occurs in the developing countries. This event is worthy of a case study because it has affected the health and jeopardized the lives of many infants, and was the cause of multiple avoidable deaths. It is not right that the health of people is compromised just for a company to make money. “According to the World Health Organization, 1.5 million infants die around the world every year because they are not breastfed.” (Lapland 2).

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