Nestle corp

It’s worth noting that in both 2017 and 2018, Nestlé ranked in the top three among brands whose plastic trash was most often collected in global cleanup effortsconducted by the environmental group Break Free From Plastic.

1.5 m kids?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/slave-free-chocolate/

---

hunton andrews kurth liars

ecowatch yamil 8 24

[pix water pours out of a pipe beside one of the sites in the San Bernardino Mountains where the company BlueTriton Brands has been collecting water for bottling, near Rimforest, California on Dec. 4, 2021. Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has ordered BlueTriton Brands, the company formerly known as Nestlé that bottles and sells bottled water brand Arrowhead Water, to stop drawing water from the San Bernardino Mountains in California.

The decision by USFS supports a cease and desist made last year by the California Water Resources Control Board that stated the company did not have water rights for diverting and bottling water in the San Bernardino National Forest. According to the decision fact sheet, the company was ordered to stop operations at 10 of its 13 diversion points and was required to submit monthly reports for the remaining water being taken and bottled.

Now, USFS has denied BlueTriton’s application for a new permit and is requiring the company to stop its bottling operations in the San Bernardino Mountains. The company has been ordered to remove its diversion infrastructure, including a pipeline, from the area, the Los Angeles Times reported. BlueTriton Brands has sued to challenge the decision, according to a court document filed on August 6.

The decision comes following years of complaints against the company for diverting water and harming wildlife, KTLA reported. The California Water Resources Control Board noted that it had received many complaints about BlueTrition Brands’ “unreasonable use of water” and the impacts it could have in a drought-stricken state.

“It’s a huge victory after 10 years,” Amanda Frye, an activist from Redlands, California, told the Los Angeles Times. “I’m hoping that we can restore Strawberry Creek, have its springs flowing again, and get the habitat back.”

As District Ranger Michael Nobles explained in a letter to BlueTriton Brands about the permit denial, the company stated its operations were for bottled water, but up to 98% of the diverted water per month was going to the old Arrowhead Springs hotel, which the company sold in 2016 to the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. The amount of water taken in recent months has also increased, Nobles said.

“This increase represents significantly more water than has ever been delivered previously,” Nobles wrote in a letter about the decision. “The hotel and conference facility on the property is not operating, and there is no explanation of where the millions of gallons of water per month are going.”

The area’s Strawberry Creek watershed has been approved for water diversions since 1929, the Los Angeles Times reported. BlueTriton Brands, formerly operating as Nestlé, had long operated in the area under an expired permit that was finally renewed in 2018 with a 5-year timeline.

Despite environmentalists’ complaints against its operations and the reasons outlined for permit rejection in a letter from the U.S. Forest Service, BlueTriton Brands said it “has not negatively affected the Strawberry Canyon environment” and that the permit denial had “no legal merit,” as the Los Angeles Times reported.

Activists are hopeful the decision will help improve the Strawberry Creek watershed and local environment.

“Our goal was to get that water back in the creek and protect the forest,” Frye said. “The proof will be when the pipes and all that infrastructure is taken out and it’s restored. But I think we’re nearing the end.”

Maine Gov. Paul LePage

Around the world, private firms have been given “carte blanche rights to mine local groundwater supplies at the expense of local populations, say experts.” In 1997, Swiss food giant Nestlé signed a contract with the privately- owned water services provider in Fryeburg, Maine, to buy freshwater in bulk for its Poland Spring brand of bottled water. Fearing that large-scale commercial water exploitation would lead to groundwater depletion and the Saco River drying up, the town of Fryeburg enacted a Land Use Ordinance that required that any company pumping more than 10,000 gallons of water a day get approval from the planning board. With a constant stream of litigation and appeals, however, Fryeburg Water Co. was able to buy time while continuing its moneymaking sideline business without interruption.

Read the rest by Jonas Persson and Mary Bottari -- LePage Supports Pumping Public Water for Private Gain -- on PRWatch.

occupy ~ stratfor

...

The playbook in action for Nestle

Speaking at the April 1982 Public Affairs Council conference to his colleagues in the PR industry, Pagan revealed the skeleton of the playbook that would last all the way through the Stratfor days.

Pagan International arose out of the ashes of a controversial Nestle public relations campaign named, in Orwellian fashion, the “Nestle Coordination Center for Nutrition.” It was co-run by Pagan and Jack Mongoven.

Mongoven was once a reporter for The Chicago Tribune and served as an executive editor of Pioneer Newspapers before becoming a spokesman for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and then the Republican National Committee.

Nestle’s Coordination Center for Nutrition began in 1980 as a major public relations effort designed to fend off complaints and an eventual international boycott. Criticism of Nestle was spearheaded by the British group War on Want, which tracked the company’s marketing of powdered baby milk in the developing world in a 1974 investigation called “The Baby Killer.”

Nestle had decided the developing world would be a good place to sell its baby formula, despite the fact that the formula interrupted women’s lactation process and prevented their breasts from producing enough milk.

“Women who were induced to use [the] formula in place of breast milk often had no choice but to dilute the formula with contaminated water, leading to diarrhea, dehydration and death among … infants,” explain John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton in their book, “Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry.”

This behavior by Nestle created a global uproar and eventually planted the seeds of a boycott by more than 700 churches and activist groups.

Mongoven and Pagan — under the auspices of the Coordination Center for Nutrition, which shared office space with The Tobacco Institute,according to Legacy Tobacco Archive Library documents — decided the best response to the burgeoning social movement was to divide and conquer it.

One of their first strategies was to peel off some of strongest supporters of the anti-Nestle campaign — educators.

“Some of the boycott’s strongest support came from teachers, represented by the National Teachers Association, so NCCN courted support from American Federation of Teachers, a smaller, more conservative rival union,” wrote Stauber and Rampton.

Nestle also won over an ally from the inside of another institutional opponent: churches.

“To counter the churches involved in the boycott, they needed to find a strong church that would take their side,” Stauber and Rampton further explained. “The United Methodists were supporting the boycott, but through negotiations and piecemeal concessions, Nestle gradually succeeded in winning them over.”

To make amends, Nestle worked with the Infant Formula Audit Commission to ensure its global marketing practices were in line with World Health Organization rules. It was chaired by Edmund Muskie, a former U.S. senator and U.S. secretary of state under President Jimmy Carter.

Muskie’s audit commission — or, better put, Nestle’s — is now seen as a “model” for corporations seeking to defuse sticky communication crises, as documented in a 1986 article in the Journal for Business Strategy.

For his successful efforts running what he would later describe as “a responsive, accurate corporate issue and trends warning system [with] analysis capability,” Pagan received the Public Relations Society of America’s prestigious Silver Anvil Award. Other industries have followed similar strategies, such as the shale gas industry’s“Energy in Depth” and corporate education reform’s “Stand for Children.”...

human rights

https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/nestle-u-s-a-inc-v-doe/

Nestlé U.S.A., Inc. v. Doe

Petition for certiorari denied on January 11, 2016

Docket No.	Op. Below	Argument	Opinion	Vote	Author	Term
15-349	9th Cir.	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	OT 2015

Issue: (1) Whether a defendant is subject to suit under the Alien Tort Statute for aiding and abetting another person's alleged violation of the law of nations based on allegations that the defendant intended to pursue a legitimate business objective while knowing (but not intending) that the objective could be advanced by the other person's violation of international law; (2) whether the “focus” test of Morrison v. National Australian Bank, Ltd. governs whether a proposed application of the Alien Tort Statute would be impermissibly extraterritorial under Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.; and (3) whether there is a well-defined international-law consensus that corporations are subject to liability for violations of the law of nations.

same case?

https://ballotpedia.org/Nestle_USA_v._Doe_I

Nestlé USA v. Doe I is a case scheduled for argument before the Supreme Court of the United States during the court's October 2020-2021 term. The case came on a writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. It was consolidated with Cargill v. Doe I.[[2]](https://ballotpedia.org/Nestl%C3%A9_USA_v._Doe_I#cite_note-2)

The case concerns the Alien Tort Statute.

HIGHLIGHTS

The case:A group of Malian citizens ("claimants") filed a lawsuit under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) against corporations including Nestlé USA and Cargill, Inc. In the lawsuit, the claimants alleged they were subjected to child slavery on cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California dismissed the case on the grounds that corporations could not be held liable under the ATS. On appeal, the 9th Circuit vacated the lower court's ruling.

The issue:"1. Whether an aiding and abetting claim against a domestic corporation brought under the Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1350, may overcome the extraterritoriality bar where the claim is based on allegations of general corporate activity in the United States and where plaintiffs cannot trace the alleged harms, which occurred abroad at the hands of unidentified foreign actors, to that activity.

Whether the Judiciary has the authority under the Alien Tort Statute to impose liability on domestic corporations."[[3]](https://ballotpedia.org/Nestl%C3%A9_USA_v._Doe_I#cite_note-questions-3)

The outcome: The appeal is pending adjudication before the U.S. Supreme Court.

You can review the lower court's opinion here.

Timeline

The following timeline details key events in this case:

July 2, 2020: The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the consolidated cases.
October 2, 2019: Cargill, Inc., the petitioner, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
September 25, 2019: Nestlé USA, the petitioner, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
July 5, 2019: The 9th Circuit reversed the district court's ruling in an amended opinion and denied the petition for rehearing.

Background

Initial complaint and appeal

A group of anonymous Malian citizens ("claimants") filed a class-action lawsuit under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) against multinational cocoa suppliers, including Cargill, Inc., and food and beverage companies, including Nestlé USA. The claimants alleged that as children they were forced to work on cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire.[[4]](https://ballotpedia.org/Nestl%C3%A9_USA_v._Doe_I#cite_note-Cargill-4)[[5]](https://ballotpedia.org/Nestl%C3%A9_USA_v._Doe_I#cite_note-petition-5)

In 2010, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California dismissed the lawsuit, holding the claimants (1) did not and could not allege the defendants "acted with the purpose and intent that their conduct would perpetuate child slavery in Ivorian farms" and (2) failed to show anything more than "ordinary commercial transactions." The district court also held that international law prevented ATS claims against corporate defendants.[[5]](https://ballotpedia.org/Nestl%C3%A9_USA_v._Doe_I#cite_note-petition-5)

On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit vacated the district court's ruling in an amended opinion and remanded the case. The 9th Circuit held ATS claims could be brought against corporate defendants.[[5]](https://ballotpedia.org/Nestl%C3%A9_USA_v._Doe_I#cite_note-petition-5)

Second appeal

In 2016, the Malian citizens filed an amended complaint. The Central District of California dismissed the complaint, holding the claimants' focus was outside the United States, or extraterritorial. On appeal, the 9th Circuit reversed the district court's judgment, holding that (1) corporations can be sued under the ATS and (2) the claimants' complaints had a sufficient U.S. focus. The 9th Circuit also issued an amended order holding the claimants had standing.[[5]](https://ballotpedia.org/Nestl%C3%A9_USA_v._Doe_I#cite_note-petition-5)

Alien Tort Statute

The Alien Tort Statute (28 U.S. Code § 1350) provides:

“

The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.[[6]](https://ballotpedia.org/Nestl%C3%A9_USA_v._Doe_I#cite_note-quotedisclaimer-6)

”

Questions presented

...

guk

Court ruling / Nestlé cannot claim bottled water is 'essential public service'

Michigan’s second-highest court rules in favor of township in case that could damage company’s effort to privatize water...

1219

a court overturned a decision that would have forced the Michigan township of Osceola to issue a permit to Nestlé to build a massive water pumping station. This is a huge win for Michiganders who are against Nestlé’s attempt to suck the state dry, all to bottle water for profits.

This legal decision couldn’t have happened without SumOfUs members like you,who banded together to chip in over $50,000 to pay for the legal and administrative fees for the legal challenge.

Not only that, you saved a township from bankruptcy. Osceola Township, with a population of 2,000, was running out of options to pay to fight back against Nestlé’s water sucking ways. Until you came in.

1119

https://www.ecowatch.com/ginnie-springs-nestle-bottled-water-2640064483.html

919

four days before their huge legal showdown with Nestlé, the people of Osceola Township seriously need your help.

Nestlé’s vast water processing plant is devastating this small community in Michigan.Like a giant leech, it sucks up 350,000 gallons of water daily to bottle for profit. The town’s stream runs ever lower.

When the township fought back, Nestlé sued them -- and now the final legal showdown is just days away.

The expert lawyers they’ve hired are expensive and costs have gone through the roof. And that’s where you come in, Pat.

Can you chip in to keep Nestlé’s greedy hands off Osceola Township’s water?

Guess how much Nestlé pays to pump 250 gallons of water a minute, or more than 350,000 gallons every single day, from Osceola Township? Just$200 a year.

The spring water generates huge profits for the corporation when they sell it in disposable plastic bottles, many of which end up polluting rivers and beaches.

Osceola’s water is a precious resourcethat should be used for the benefit of the community, notsold at a profit to pay for the private jets and fancy suits of Nestlé executives.

Residents of Osceola township are watching water levels in local streams drop drastically since Nestlé moved into town and started pumping their water to sell for massive profits. And a small group of local volunteers has taken Nestlé to court.

For years Nestlé has tried to crush this committed group of residents so it can pump even more water to sell at an eye-watering profit.

This dedicated group in Osceola has been locked in a two-year legal battle against Nestlé --but after mountains of legal challenges, the group is drowning in debt.

So they’ve asked for your help today Pat. The final decision on whether Nestlé can pump more water is right around the corner -- and if they can’t get some money to their lawyers soon, this fearless group risks losing everything to Nestlé.

Can you chip in $1 to keep Nestlé’s greedy hands off Osceola township’s precious water?

Right now, Nestlé is pumping 250 gallons of water a minute or more than 350,000 gallons every single day from Osceola Township for just $200 a year.

And in their battle to stop this outrageous water-grab, this tiny group of volunteers is over $100,000 in debt.

Their lawyers have fought tirelessly by their side, but they can’t continue without getting paid. Losing their lawyers now would leave them in debt with nothing to show for years of work against Nestlé, and that’s exactly what the mega-corporation wants.

But you can make sure their fight isn’t over yet. Nestlé has millions to throw at this court case, but this group of dedicated fighters in Osceola has you. With your donation today they can keep their lawyers and make sure they have the best legal team on hand in these last critical months so that Nestlé can’t pump more of their precious water.

raised 50K defense

nb cargill caved to bolsonaro?

bryan keogh

Strict Amazon protections made Brazilian farmers more productive, new research shows

November 5, 2018

https://theconversation.com/**strict-amazon-protections-made-brazilian-farmers-more-productive**-new-research-shows-105789

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s new president, will make many decisions during his four-year term, from combating violence to stimulating a stagnant economy.

Those decisions will have large impacts on Brazilians, who remain deeply divided over the controversial election of this far-right populist.

But some of Bolsonaro’s decisions will affect the entire world, namely his promises to cut environmental protections in the Brazilian Amazon.

The Amazon’s uncertain fate

The Amazon is the world’s largest tropical rainforest and a major global food exporter.

The Amazon Basin also provides the rains that nourish Brazil’s productive croplands to the south, a breadbasket for the world. The rainforest’s destruction could cause large-scale droughts in Brazil, leading to nationwide crop losses.

An estimated 9 percent of Amazonian forests disappeared between 1985 and 2017, reducing the rainforest’s ability to ...partic cattle ranching ...strict environmental protections passed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2004. His Workers Party cracked down on illegal land clearing in the Amazon, making Brazil a world leader in rainforest protection.

But deforestation in the Amazon has begun to climb again recently.

Brazilian President Michel Temer, a conservative who entered office in 2016 during a deep recession, has loosened enforcement of federal anti-deforestation laws, slashed the environmental ministry’s budget and opened the Amazon to mining.

Satellite data reveal that between August 2017 to 2018, 1.1 million acres of Brazilian Amazonian forest were cleared – the highest deforestation rate since 2007.

Brazil’s next president.]

President-elect Bolsonaro has promised to further slash environmental protections in Brazil, saying that federal conservation zones and hefty fines for cutting down trees hinder economic growth.

Specific plans include eliminating protections for indigenous territories that safeguard forests from private developers and reducing fines for illegally clearing land.

Bolsonaro also wants to dismantle Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment, which enforces environmental laws.

Brazil’s agricultural innovations

The president-elect’s deregulatory agenda is supported by the Bancada Ruralista, a powerful congressional caucus that defends Brazilian agribusiness interests.

Despite the lobby’s stance that regulation hurts business, Brazil’s strict environmental laws have actually helped Amazonian farmers, my recent research shows.

From 2004 to 2014, Brazil’s federal government employed a host of tactics to reduce Amazonian farmers’ incentives to clear land. It increased penalties for deforestation, making it far more expensive to create new grazing land. Simultaneously, it offered state-subsidized, low-interest financing for farmers who adopted more sustainable practices.

Those policies encouraged innovations that have made Amazon farmland much more productive. In a co-authored study published in October in the journal Global Environmental Change, my colleagues and I found that food production in the Amazon has substantially increased since 2004.

Amazonian farmers are now planting and harvesting two crops – mostly soybean and corn – each year, rather than just one. This is called “double cropping.”

Our study found that land in double cropping in Brazil’s most important agricultural state, Mato Grosso, increased from 840,000? acres in 2001 to more than 10.6 million acres in 2013, boosted by improved environmental laws.

Farmers are getting richer

Environmental regulation of the Brazilian Amazon has helped farmers improve business in other ways too, our research found.

Improved pasture management in Mato Grosso state led the number of cattle slaughtered annually per acre to double, meaning farmers are producing more meat – and therefore earning more money – with their land.

Ranchers who add crops into pasture areas can more than quadruple the amount of beef produced because cattle raised in integrated crop and livestock systems gain weight more quickly. That spares remaining Amazonian forests from deforestation.

These sustainable ranching practices also reduce the greenhouse gases associated with beef and leather production. Better nourished cows are slaughtered sooner, meaning fewer burps per cow per lifetime, leading to lower methane emissions.

Brazil’s progressive environmental protections have even pushed corporations that operate in the Amazon to adopt more sustainable practices.

Since 2006, hundreds of multinational food and timber companies, including Cargill and Nestle, have adopted “zero-deforestation commitments” – pledges that they will never again source products from farmers who continue to deforest their land.

The commitments started in the Brazilian Amazon and have since extended to all forests on the planet, including the Indonesian and Malaysian rainforests.

Brazilian law, which restricts Amazonian farmers from clearing more than 20 percent of their land and requires them to federally register their property for monitoring, has made it easier for zero-deforestation companies to drop producers who cut down trees.

Saving the Amazon

Strong environmental protections are necessary to save the Amazon, protecting Brazil and the world from the loss of this critical, fragile habitat.

If Brazil’s next president dismantles its environmental laws, corporations could abandon their zero-deforestation standards in the Amazon. That could have ripple effects in other threatened habitats worldwide.

Far from being bad for business, Brazil’s Amazonian protections help sustain the country as a global breadbasket.

If Bolsonaro scraps them, he won’t just imperil a legendary rainforest. He’ll hurt Brazilian farmers, too – and the consumers worldwide who depend on them.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90333443/big-food-is-pushing-the-government-for-a-price-on-carbon

The new Sustainable Food Policy Alliance, including Nestlé USA, Unilever, Danone North America, and Mars, Inc., is asking the government to establish an “ambitious” carbon pricing system aligned with the Paris agreement, accelerate clean energy deployment, include agriculture and forestry in an incentive-based program to cut emissions, and invest in more resilient infrastructure and promote equity.

“It’s vital that corporations likeUnilever demonstrate that sustainable practices can be good for society, good for the environment, and good for business,” says Stefani Millie, senior manager of external affairs at Unilever North America. “We know we can’t solve these systemic issues on our own, so we work with other large corporations, as we do with the Sustainable Food Policy Alliance, to use our collective leadership to drive more powerful change at a quicker pace.”

It’s not the first time that companies have voiced strong support for climate action. More than 2,000 businesses and investors, from Apple to Nike, signed the “We Are Still In” declaration after Trump announced his plans to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. But the food companies will now more actively lobby Congress for specific, science-based policies.

“What I think is really unique and excellent here is that they’re going a step further and saying that the federal government has to lead on this,” says Christina DeConcini, director of government affairs at the nonprofit World Resources Institute, adding, “I couldn’t overstate the importance of businesses writ large–including these big food companies–saying, ‘We want a price on carbon and we want strong climate policy.’ Because we know we’re not going to get climate policy without a wide spectrum of voices being very vocal in advocating for it.”

Carbon pricing is a key part of the overall strategy, and a “helpful tool to support the transition to a zero-carbon economy,” says Millie. “It encourages low-carbon behaviors and incentivizes new innovations for cleaner options.” Since 2016, Unilever has internally priced emissions from its own manufacturing, using the money to pay for new clean technology at its sites. Some of its brands have similar approaches, including Ben & Jerry’s. That means the company is prepared for a carbon tax, and it wants other corporations to follow. “We want to play a leadership role in the transition to a zero-carbon economy.”

The impacts of the government shutdown on the nation's national parks have been widely reported: overflowing bathrooms, decimated habitat and widespread litter resulted in parks that remained open without staff oversight and management. In response, individuals, organizations and corporations have volunteered to help out with the clean-up. One of these is Nestlé Waters North America, which released this statement last week:

"At Nestlé Waters North America, we believe that even one bottle or can that is not recycled properly is one too many. When we heard about the need in our national parks, we wanted to help."...

Nestlé is trying to crush a tiny town of less than 2,000 people. All to keep sucking their most precious resource -- water.

Right now, Nestlé is pumping 250 gallons of water a minute or more than 350,000 gallons every single day from Osceola Township. Bottling it up, and selling it off for massive profit. And guess how much Nestlé pays?

Just $200 a year. Yes, you read that right.

But the community of Osceola is fighting back: it’s gearing up to appeal a court decision that outrageously let Nestlé take more water from the tiny township.

This tiny community is up against the might of Nestlé. Its legal costs are spiralling and Nestlé is still trying to bully it into backing down.

https://www.ecowatch.com/nestle-water-california-2582073595.html

U.S. Allows Nestlé to Keep Piping Water From Drought-Ridden Southern California

The U.S. Forest Service offered Nestlé a three-year permit on Wednesday to keep taking millions of gallons of water from the San Bernardino National Forest in California, the Associated Press reported.

The offer has certain restrictions. Nestlé, which sells bottled water under the Arrowhead brand, can continue piping from the Strawberry Creek watershed "when there is water available consistent with the forest's Land Management Plan," according to the AP, citing the Forest Service offer. The watershed is currently rated as "impaired."

https://www.ecowatch.com/nestle-water-san-bernardino-2575958681.html

Settlement Ends Nestlé’s Expired 'Zombie' Permit to Siphon Water From San Bernardino National Forest

Federal officials and conservation groups reached an agreement Wednesday that will finally end Nestlé Corp.'s ability to rely on a permit that expired 30 years ago to siphon water from the San Bernardino National Forest for its massive bottled-water operation. The company's diversion has severely reduced water in spring-fed Strawberry Creek, which forest wildlife and plants need to survive.

This settlement of the 2015 lawsuit requires the U.S. Forest Service to decide in 30 days whether or not to issue a new permit for the pipeline and Nestlé's associated activities in the San Bernardino National Forest.The Center for Biological Diversity, Courage Campaign Institute and the Story of Stuff Project agreed to dismiss an appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals regarding the old "zombie" permit after a new decision is issued. The groups reserved the right to challenge any new Forest Service decision.

Under the expired permit, Nestlé siphoned off as much as 162 million gallons of water a year from Strawberry Creek. Nestlé, the world's largest water-bottling company, earned $8.3 billion in profits from its water business in 2016. U.S. Geological Survey reports from July 2017 show that, despite heavy winter precipitation across California, Strawberry Creek's streamflow levels were the lowest since the agency began keeping track 96 years ago.

"This agreement stops Nestlé and the Forest Service from relying on a 30-year-old permit, but Strawberry Creek still desperately needs protection," said Ileene Anderson, a senior biologist at the Center for Biological Diversity. "The real tragedy is that Nestlé is sucking the creek dry to bottle water for profit, dooming plants and wildlife that have relied on it for tens of thousands of years. We'll keep fighting to protect Strawberry Creek and our forests from commercial exploitation."

The groups are urging the Forest Service to deny a new permit to Nestlé to safeguard the public land, water, plants and animals of the San Bernardino National Forest. If a new permit is issued, the agency should ensure there is enough water left in Strawberry Creek to support fish, wildlife and native plants year round.

The State Water Resources Control Board is also evaluating Nestlé's water rights on Strawberry Creek, which a board investigation determined is far less than the corporation claims.

...

Osceola Township’s fight to protect its water from Nestlé’s greed. Over and over again SumOfUs members answered the call to support this tiny township in its David and Goliath battle with Nestlé.

When a judge ruled in favour of Nestlé, Osceola Township decided to appeal and continue to protect its water. And thanks to caring members like you, we were able to give them another $20,000 USD to fund the appeal. This makes a massive $50,000 total that we were able to give to this township to allow them fight Nestlé to protect their water.

The people of Osceola Township are everyday heroes. Without their hard work and dedication, Nestlé would be sucking Michigan dry. We want to say a huge thank you to the people on the ground, doing the incredible work of fighting Nestlé.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/16/health/brazil-obesity-nestle.html

Planet Fat

Articles in this series are exploring the causes and the consequences of rising obesity rates around the world.

NESTLÉ GOES DOOR-TO-DOOR

How Big Business Got Brazil’s Poor Hooked on Junk Food

RESHAPING AFRICAN PALATES

Obesity Was Rising as Ghana Embraced Fast Food. Then Came KFC.

THE SODA TAX SHOWDOWN

She Took On Colombia’s Soda Industry. Then She Was Silenced.

A U.S.-STYLE DIET

A Nasty, Nafta-Related Surprise: Mexico’s Soaring Obesity

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

In Asia’s Fattest Country, Nutritionists Take Money From Food Giants

A FATHER'S FIGHT

One Man’s Stand Against Junk Food as Diabetes Climbs Across India

Elsewhere in the world, soda companies have assiduously worked their government connections and economic clout. In internal company emails leaked to an American watchdog group last year, Coke executives described strategies for winning over government ministers and other officials in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ecuador, Portugal, and regions of Spain.

The Australian Beverages Council wrote in its 2016 annual report that fighting a soft drinks tax “has been consuming vast amounts of resources,” and that “our learnings from other markets through our international network tells us that these types of threats must be constantly challenged before they get before a parliament for debate.”

In Colombia, where soda is often cheaper than bottled water, the soda-tax fight took place in a key market for beverage makers. Sales volume of carbonated drinks here has climbed more than 25 percent over the past 15 years; during that same time in the United States, it fell 12 percent, according to Euromonitor, a market research firm.

Coke and Pepsi were far less visible in the Colombia battle, leaving the big national beverage company, Postobón, in the spotlight. Postobón, a drinks maker and distributor for Pepsi, is part of a huge conglomerate that includes sugar cane growers, sugar mills and the country’s biggest media company, RCN Televisión, which helped disseminate the anti-tax message. Postobón and RCN declined interview requests.

The stage was set for a clash between a powerful industry and a stubborn public advocate.

Showdown Over an Ad

In early 2016, Colombia, a nation of 49 million, was facing the unfamiliar prospect of stability and peace. After decades of civil war and narco-terrorism, Colombians were enjoying the fruits of an aggressive United States-backed military campaign that had largely decimated the country’s drug cartels. Unemployment was near historical lows, the poverty rate was dropping and millions were hopeful about the possibility of lasting peace with the country’s main rebel group, the FARC.

In March 2016, the country’s health minister, Alejandro Gaviria Uribe, proposed a 20 percent tax on soda and sugar-sweetened beverages — the equivalent of about 10 cents on a liter bottle — that became part of a larger tax overhaul backed by Colombia’s president and the Ministry of Finance.

“For the first time in our lives, we thought we might become a normal country and be able to deal with issues other than violence,” said Diana Guarnizo, a lawyer with Dejusticia, a rights group that helped promote the soda tax. “Here we were, an organization that had dealt with peace, violence, land reform and gross injustice, and suddenly we had the luxury to talk about what mothers are putting in their children’s lunchboxes.”

The measure was designed to inject $340 million a year into Colombia’s chronically underfunded national health care system, but Mr. Gaviria had a larger goal: to dampen soda consumption in a country with an obesity rate that had tripled since 1980 to 19 percent of adults. The fastest growth had occurred among Colombian youth from ages 5 to 17. Each year, 4,000 people age 30 to 70 die from obesity-related illnesses like heart disease and diabetes, the Health Ministry said.

Photo

Dr. Iván Darío Escobar, an endocrinologist, left, used a soda bottle for patient education in Bogotá. Right, a patient and her nutritionist at a monthly weigh-in.

A grocery store in Bogotá. The beverage industry says soda taxes unfairly burden the poor.

Credit Juan Arredondo for The New York Times

The issue attracted the attention of Dr. Cerón, whose 10-employee organization had previously worked on climate change, smoking restrictions and the lack of potable water in poor communities. Encouraged by the health minister’s soda tax announcement, they formed a coalition of three dozen civic organizations they called the Alliance for Food Health.

They received crucial support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, a foundation created by Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, which dispatched experts from the United States. It also provided pivotal funding, including $260,000 for the public service ad — an amount nearly equal to Educar’s entire annual budget — and paid for enhanced security at the group’s offices.

Opinion polls showed that 70 percent of the public embraced the tax. Legislative backing was harder to come by, however: 42 legislators in the 268-seat Congress said they supported the measure.

The debate escalated in August, with Congress still months from a vote, when television stations across the country began airing a public service announcement in support of the tax. The 30-second spot, produced by Dr. Cerón’s group, used data from the W.H.O. and featured a smartly dressed man drinking a series of sugary beverages throughout the day. Four sweetened drinks a day, the ad said, could deliver up to 47 teaspoons of sugar. Then it showed an overweight couple, a gangrenous foot and what appeared to be a man in cardiac arrest, followed by an admonition. “Better to drink water, milk or teas without sugar,” the narrator said. “Take care of your life. Take it seriously.”

An Educar Consumidores worker handed out pamphlets on healthy eating in the Ciudad Kennedy district of Bogotá. Credit Juan Arredondo for The New York Times

Postobón, the soft drink company, promptly filed a complaint with the government’s consumer protection agency, the Superintendent of Industry and Commerce, claiming that the ad’s use of the teaspoon as a unit of measurement was imprecise and that it unfairly suggested that all sweetened drinks were unhealthy.

Nutrition experts countered that the ad was wholly consistent with established science showing the impact of excess sugar consumption on weight and metabolic diseases like diabetes, gout and heart disease. The Harvard School of Public Health has chronicled multiple studies backing up this assertion, including a point nutritionists make repeatedly: that sugary beverages lack nutritional value and add calories without leaving consumers feeling full.

Dr. Luis Fernando Gómez, a professor of preventive medicine at Javeriana University in Bogotá who backed the tax measure, said Postobón’s allegations about the commercial were disingenuous. “Every fact and figure cited in that ad was backed up by mainstream science,” he said.

But the head of the Colombian consumer protection agency, a presidential appointee, sided with the industry petitioners. Just two weeks later, in a decision that Colombian legal experts described as unusually swift, the agency ordered the commercial withdrawn.

Borrowing almost identical language from Postobón’s complaint — which had been filed by a company lawyer who had previously led the agency — the superintendent’s office said consumers had the right to truthful information, not messages that were “misleading, imprecise and confusing.”

The ruling went on to bar Educar Consumidores employees from speaking publicly about the links between sugar and obesity, an edict so sweeping it included the Health Ministry’s own research on the subject.

The consumer agency did not respond to requests for comment.

The actions stunned legal analysts and health advocates. “It was unprecedented,” said Ch’uya H. Lane, regional director for obesity prevention efforts at the Global Health Advocacy Incubator, which is affiliated with Bloomberg Philanthropies.

“We were completely shut down,” Dr. Cerón said. “Censored.”

Criminal Inquiry Over a Blog Post

Postobón is a unit of one of Colombia’s largest and most respected conglomerates, Organización Ardila Lülle. Founded in the early 1950s by Carlos Ardila Lülle, 87, Organización Ardila Lülle has helped define the country’s modern identity through a raft of companies that own a soccer team, an insurance company and the dealerships that sell Dodge, Jeep and Ford vehicles.

Postobón is a storied brand that sells a rainbow of homegrown drinks. Among its best-known products are a cola called Colombiana and Manzana Postobón, a century-old apple-flavored drink that is something of a national icon.

A delivery of soft drinks in Bogotá. Postobón, the leading beverage company in Colombia, is part of the conglomerate that owns an influential media company. Credit Juan Arredondo for The New York Times

Organización Ardila Lülle remained silent during the soda-tax debate, and company executives declined to be interviewed. Instead, Postobón, RCN and allies like the National Business Association of Colombia carried the message that the tax would cost jobs, decimate independent convenience shop owners and choke the economy.

“In Colombia, the sugar industry and the main media companies belong to the same economic conglomerates,” Mr. Gaviria, the health minister, said. “They have an intimidating power. And they used it.”

That fall, at least 90 lobbyists worked to sway legislators, according to a tally of visitor logs obtained by Educar Consumidores. During committee hearings on the measure, lobbyists often sat next to lawmakers, a flagrant violation of congressional rules, said Óscar Ospina Quintero, a legislator from the Green Alliance party. Mr. Ospina said he protested the lobbyists’ presence in the chamber but was rebuffed by congressional leaders.

“The response was fierce,” Mr. Gaviria said. “I remember that, during one of the debates, a senator said to me: ‘In all my years in Congress I’ve never seen a lobbying effort like this.’”

In October, not long after she was censored by the government, Dr. Cerón found a tactic she thought might keep attention on the subject without running afoul of the government’s order silencing her. In a blog item posted on the Alliance for Food Health website, she made fun of an RCN soap opera from 1980s called “Azúcar,” or Sugar, that was set in Colombia’s sugar cane heartland. Scrawled across a publicity poster for the show, she wrote, “It’s one thing to watch Sugar; it’s another to drink it in excess.”

An RCN lawyer demanded she delete the post, claiming it was intellectual property theft. She complied, but the network filed a complaint with federal prosecutors who, in turn, opened a criminal investigation. The case, still pending, carries a possible fine of $300,000.

“If they win,” she said. “I will be financially ruined.”

It was around this time that employees at Educar’s offices began to complain about echoes and other voices on their cellphones. They suspected they might be under surveillance. Others found it hard to use the internet in the office. In October, Dr. Cerón’s office phone ceased functioning entirely. “Sometimes we could not work at all because our laptops would stop following orders and the mouse would just do what it wanted,” Diana Vivas, the group’s lawyer, said.

Ms. Lane of Bloomberg Philanthropies was so concerned that she stopped using email and the phone to discuss strategy with Educar. Instead, she moved communications to some of the same encrypted apps used after the surveillance of soda-tax advocates was discovered in Mexico.

Called in to investigate, Andrés Erazo, Educar’s longtime tech consultant, said he discovered that antivirus software on workplace computers had been disabled. He also found spyware on the office router that gave an unknown outsider access to the organization’s web traffic and online communication. According to Mr. Erazo, three cellphones — including those used by Dr. Cerón and Ms. Vivas — had been compromised by spyware.

Mr. Erazo urged Dr. Cerón to buy new cellphones but she refused. “If they’re listening to us, what are they going to hear?” he recalled her telling him. “We’re talking about a public health campaign!”

An independent examination of Educar’s computers conducted for The New York Times by CSIETE, an internet security firm in Bogotá, did not turn up any malware. Giovanni Cruz Forero, the firm’s chief executive, said Educar employees had reformated one of the two office laptops the firm examined, which would have largely erased evidence of tampering. Mr. Cruz said it was also possible intruders took steps to erase their digital footprints. The firm did not examine cellphones of Educar employees.

One morning in mid-November, Dr. Cerón was startled awake at 5 a.m. by a call to her cellphone.

“Shut up, you old wench,” the caller yelled, according to a report she filed with the Fiscal General de la Nación, Colombia’s prosecutorial agency.

In early December, Dr. Cerón was walking to the gym when a man, his face obscured by a hooded sweatshirt, accosted her with the same message. “Cállese,” he yelled before walking away, or, “keep your mouth shut.”

She reported both episodes to prosecutors.

A spokesman for the prosecutorial agency declined to comment on Dr. Céron’s complaints, citing privacy rules that bar discussion of cases with anyone not directly involved.

Dr. Cerón stopped driving alone. And she pressed the local news media to cover the intimidation, but it was facing its own challenges from tax opponents.

Pressuring the Media

With its cordon of armed guards, bomb-sniffing dogs and airport-style X-ray machines, the headquarters of Colombia’s oldest newspaper, El Espectador, is among the most heavily fortified compounds in the country. The need for such measures is driven home by a sixth-floor display: showcased behind glass is a yellowing front page reporting the assassination of El Espectador’s editor, Guillermo Cano, who was gunned down on Dec. 17, 1986, as he drove home from work.

Three years later, a huge truck bomb shattered the newspaper’s offices, killing a reporter and wounding 83 others. During the 1980s and 1990s, violence claimed the lives of a dozen El Espectador employees — all victims of Colombian drug cartels angered by the newspaper’s unflinching coverage.

El Espectador news editors said they sought to cover the soda tax fight evenhandedly in the news pages, even as the paper supported the tax in its editorials.

Fidel Cano, center, publisher of El Espectador, in the paper’s newsroom in Bogotá. Credit Juan Arredondo for The New York Times

Industry executives were not happy with the paper’s stance, but they got especially upset when it produced a video, part of a biweekly commentary called La Pulla, that lampooned tax opponents for ignoring scientific evidence about the risks of excess sugar.

“Once we published the video, things got crazy,” the paper’s health and science editor, Pablo Correa, said.

With a tone both cheeky and indignant, La Pulla takes on the most contentious issues of the day. In the soda tax episode, the host, María Paulina Baena, with granules of sugar flecking her lips, skewered the industry and members of Congress for spreading misinformation about the proposed tax. She ended the video with the image of a Sprite bottle and a tagline from one of the popular ads for the drink: “That’s just the way it is.”

The video was posted just before midnight on Dec. 15, quickly drawing 500,000 views. In the morning, Fidel Cano, the publisher of El Espectador and a nephew of the paper’s slain editor, said he had received a call from a senior advertising executive at the newspaper who told him a representative from Coca-Cola had called in protest and demanded that the Sprite bottle be removed.

Mr. Cano winced recalling what came next. With the prospect of litigation and lost ad revenue, he says he ordered the bottle edited out. In a small act of defiance, he allowed the Sprite advertisement tagline to remain.

The altered video went viral, drawing more than two million views and prompting a public discussion about censorship and the power of the soda industry.

“Did they win?” Mr. Cano reflected. “Not really.”

Continue reading the main story

Photo

María Paulina Baena, a journalist at El Espectador who writes and presents the online video commentary La Pulla. Credit Juan Arredondo for The New York Times

Reached by phone, the newspaper’s vice president for advertising, Mauricio Umaña, disputed Mr. Cano’s account, saying he had not received a call from Coca-Cola or any other soda company executive.

Other media outlets felt the industry’s pressure.

At the Colombian branch of the online news site Vice, the editorial staff clashed with advertising executives over their efforts to squelch a column criticizing the soda industry. Vice had previously run two opinion pieces in favor of the soda tax and the disputed third column did ultimately run, though not on the home page, making it hard for readers to find.

The incident was part of what prompted Vice Colombia’s founding editor, Juan Camilo Maldonado, to resign. Mr. Maldonado declined to be interviewed for this article but colleagues with direct knowledge of the incident said he was dismayed the company would cave to pressure from advertisers.

A spokesman for Vice did not address the reasons for Mr. Maldonado’s resignation, but said, “The fact that all of the stories were published and were critical of the soda industry speaks for itself.”

On the last day of 2016, opponents of the tax were victorious. Using a complex procedural maneuver, congressional leaders killed the soda tax, dropping it from the larger tax overhaul package.

“The problem isn’t just sugar,” said Iván Duque, a senator from the right-leaning Democratic Center party and a contender in next year’s presidential race, who was a vocal critic of the tax. “We need a national plan to fight sedentary lifestyles, better product labeling and education efforts that teach people to eat more fruit, fish and vegetables.”

A New Drink

Dr. Cerón and her team got a Pyrrhic victory two weeks ago when the country’s Constitutional Court overturned the consumer agency’s decision to silence Educar and ordered the agency to “abstain from censoring any other ad related to public health in the future,” according to the ruling.

“It was a great victory for free speech in Colombia,” Dr. Cerón said. “The only pity is it came too late.”

Photo

Dr. Cerón, right, at the Educar Consumidores headquarters in Bogotá. The Constitutional Court two weeks ago overturned the decision that silenced the group. Credit Juan Arredondo for The New York Times

Last summer, Postobón began what it called “a new social strategy focused on nutrition.” The campaign, unveiled in Manaure, an impoverished city in Colombia’s far north, revolves around Kufu, a new mango-flavored beverage formulated for children. It is part of the industry’s goal of tackling public health through voluntary efforts.

Postobón lauded the drink’s added vitamins and minerals, saying they would “promote cognitive development, strengthen immunity and promote healthy bones,” according to a glowing account of the event published by the newspaper La República, acquired last year by Postobón’s parent company, Organización Ardila Lülle.

Postobón said it would spend $120,000 to evaluate the initiative, which would provide free Kufu each day to thousands of poor children in the region.

The article in La República, however, did not mention one key ingredient: sugar. According to the label on the drink, one juice box of it contains 13 grams of sugar, more than half the daily recommended level for children.

oceloa mich sued b/c tried to limit 400 gal per minute extraction

Nestle has initiated its child labor prevention system in its Cocoa Plan, from freedomunited.org/ anti-slavery NGO. 10/17.

bot water = disaster capitalism?!

https://www.alternet.org/water/nestle-pays-200-year-bottle-water-near-flint-where-water-undrinkable

guard UK link?

Nestlé Pays $200 a Year to Bottle Water Near Flint—Where Water Is Undrinkable

While Flint battles a water crisis, just two hours away the beverage giant pumps almost 100,000 times what an average Michigan resident uses into plastic bottles.

Luster bathed her child in lukewarm bottled water, emptied bottle by bottle into the tub, for months. It became a game for her seven-year-old daughter. Pop the top off a bottle, and pour it into the tub. It takes about 30 minutes for a child to fill a tub this way. Pop the top, pour it in; pop the top, pour it in. Maybe less if you can get gallon jugs.

Luster lives in Flint, Michigan, and here, residents believe tap water is good for one thing: to flush the toilet.

“I don’t even water my plants with it,” she said.

Flint became synonymous with lead-poisoned water after government officials, looking to save money, switched the city’s water supply from Detroit city water to water from the corrosive Flint river.

Once the city had switched, the number of children with elevated lead exposure doubled; residents reported unexplained rashes and losing hair. An unpublished study recently found fetal deaths in Flint increased by 58% during the crisis.

Suddenly, Flint was a cause célèbre. The Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders held a debate in Flint. Barack Obama visited to raise morale. Americans who could afford it started ripping out old lead pipes. Media outlets across the country started examining their own towns for lead.

Despite having endured lead-laden tap water for years, Flint pays some of the highest water rates in the US. Several residents cited bills upwards of $200 per month for tap water they refuse to touch.

But just two hours away, in the tiny town of Evart, creeks lined by wildflowers run with clear water. The town is so small, the fairground, McDonald’s, high school and church are all within a block. But in a town of only 1,503 people, there are a dozen wells pumping water from the underground aquifer. This is where the beverage giant Nestlé pumps almost 100,000 times what an average Michigan resident uses into plastic bottles that are sold all over the midwest for around $1.

To use this natural resource, Nestlé pays $200 per year.

Now, Nestlé wants more Michigan water. In a recent permit application, the company asked to pump 210m gallons per year from Evart, a 60% increase, and for no more than it pays today. In the coming months, the state is set to decide whether Nestlé can to pump even more.

The proximity of the Nestlé plant to Flint’s degraded public water supply has some Michigan residents asking: why do we get undrinkable, unaffordable tap water, when the world’s largest food and beverage company, Nestlé, bottles the state’s most precious resource for next to nothing?

‘Don’t seem right’

“It’s almost like a civics class for us Flint folks,” said Luster. “You shouldn’t be able to profit off of water – it’s free. It came out of the ground.”

Still, in Michigan, what people have a problem with is a company bottling the state’s water and selling it back to people who, through no fault of their own, are completely dependent on it.Free water is not uncommon. In the US, water has traditionally been free for companies and people to use – it’s the government infrastructure that cleans and delivers people safe water that costs money. The government infrastructure is what failed in Flint.

Bottled water is “a necessity of life right now”, said Chuck Wolverton, a Flint resident. He won’t touch his tap water. He drives 15 miles outside of town to his brother’s house to shower every night, where he often also washes his clothes. His water bill, he said, was around $180 per month. “I don’t even give it to my dogs.”

In a state where officials denied Flint’s water was poisoned with lead; where Detroit residents choose between heat and water; where the water-borne, pneumonia-like legionnaire’s disease killed a dozen; and where gastrointestinal bugs spread among residents who lacked (or didn’t trust) water, Nestlé’s request seemed like salt on a wound.

“Don’t seem right, because they’re making profits off of it,” Wolverton said, with several fresh cases of bottled water in the back of his car.

“With the money they make, they could come and fix Flint – and I mean the water plants and our pipes,” Luster said of Nestlé. “Me and you wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

Activists here, such as Luster, see Nestlé’s bottling plant and Flint’s tainted water and Detroit’s mass water shutoffs as connected – part of an “ecosystem” (as Luster calls it) meant to put water into private hands.

‘Sustainable water practices’

In 2017, bottled water became the most consumed bottled beverage in North America, due in part to fears of lead-tainted water and concerns about the negative health effects of sugary beverages, analysts said.

Nestlé had $92bn in sales in 2016, and $7.4bn from water alone. Nevertheless, the company pays nothing for the 150 gallons per minute it already pumps from the ground in central Michigan. The $200 per year is just an administration fee.

“We’re not saying give everyone a new car, a new home. We’re just asking for our water treatment,” Luster said. “That’s a no-brainer.”

Nestlé doesn’t bicker with the price it gets water at, but it does maintain that when it turns Evart water into brands like Nestlé Pure Life and Ice Mountain, it is being a steward of the environment.

The company has 52 bottled water brands altogether, including some of the best known in the world – Poland Spring, Perrier, San Pellegrino.

“Nestlé promotes sustainable water practices throughout its operations,” said the company’s 2016 annual report. “For Nestlé Waters, this starts at the source with engagement activities with local communities to ensure the sustainability of our shared public water resources.”

Many people in Evart would probably disagree, and they’re hardly alone. A small town in Canada was recently disappointed that it was outbid by Nestlé in a bid to fund a long-term water source for the town. And environmentalists in California are watching closely whether Nestlé can continue to pump water – for $524 – out of San Bernardino national forest on a permit that expired nearly 30 years ago.

Further, Nestlé’s annual report does not address plastic pollution: a problem piling up at one million bottles per minute according to a Guardian analysis. Some campaigners believe plastic pollution to be the most significant environmental problem behind climate change. Studies have also begun to find plastic pollution in the food chain – in fish, salt, honey, beer and tap water.

A social justice issue

Michigan’s water conflicts, with Nestlé as a new focal point, have begun to attract broad social justice campaigns.

The Rev Dr William Barber II, a powerhouse preacher sometimes compared to Dr Martin Luther King Jr for his ability to weave together left-leaning politics and Christian teachings, trained some of Michigan’s local water activists in August. Many said they were directly politicized by rolling water crises in Flint and Detroit.

“One of the reasons we’re here today,” said Barber, standing backstage in a community college in Detroit, was “this water crisis”.

Social justice groups focused on water in Michigan have become an increasingly powerful force. Protesters pushed for public hearings on Nestlé’s permit in January. Residents in Flint agitated for continued state support in February. Activists in Detroit blocked city contractors from shutting off residents’ water, and won a reprieve when a judge dismissed charges against them.

Politicians are also entering the fray. The Michigan state representative Tim Sneller and colleagues asked the Michigan department of environmental quality (MDEQ) not to approve Nestlé’s permit.

“Now, I firmly support economic development in our state, and I recognize the extent to which Nestlé Waters’ presence in Michigan has helped our economy,” Sneller said, in an opinion article in April. “However, there needs to be a balance between the economic benefit of Nestlé and the responsibility of the MDEQ to protect Michigan’s environment and natural resources.”

On Friday, activists from Flint will join activists from Evart, where Nestlé pumps water. They will be joined by groups from Detroit, where people are having their water shut off, from north of the border, where the social justice group Council of Canadians is based, and from indigenous communities around the Great Lakes. Together, they want to promote a “water summit” on “human rights and water sovereignty”.

“When it comes to water, we should be working within the government to make that as cheap as possible,” Barber said. “Privatizing that which the lord created is just wrong”.

Where Barber spoke, in Detroit, water still technically belongs to the city’s residents. But in neighborhoods where one in five homes had their water shut off last year, it is anything but affordable.

‘Water is not affordable to us’

Nicole Hill, a mother of three, has her water shut off every few months. It still costs “more than $200 a month”. The first time her water was shut off, she said, “I get up, I make them breakfast, I take them to school, I come back to wash the dishes and no water comes out the faucet.”

That was in 2014, when 33,000 homes in Detroit had their water shut off. She was one of thousands who were part of a city “blitz” that shut off water to delinquent accounts. Last year, 27,000 homes in Detroit had their water shut off.

Hill went so far as to file a class action lawsuit to try to secure her community’s right to affordable water. She lost in a lower court and appealed. Last year, a panel of three federal judges ruled against her, writing: “A right of this nature is not rooted in our nation’s traditions.”

Valerie Jean, a mother of five, bonded with her neighbors after her entire block was cut off from water when multiple residents fell behind on their bills. Still struggling, Jean perpetually seems to have a blue stripe in front of her home, a kind of scarlet letter painted on front yards by city workers to highlight a home’s water access point. That makes it easier to shut water off.

“When they shut off a whole community, it shows water is not affordable to us,” said Jean.

Barber spoke to a crowd of hundreds in Detroit, with 11,000 more people watching online. The rally was not just about raising spirits. It was part of the Poor People’s Campaign, a “moral revival” organized by Barber and his co-chair, the Rev Dr Liz Theoharis, to train impoverished Americans to be activists.

Barber is a tall, stout man with a teeter-totter gait. He’s got hands the size of a bear’s and builds his speeches like a fire – nurturing a spark into a cheering, song-singing, burn-the-house-down blaze.

“The prophet said, ‘Take away your prayers, take away your sacrifice – if you want to please me, let justice roll down like water!’”

Barber started with a cold crowd, but some were soon in tears, and answered calls in unison – “Forward together!” Barber yelled. “Not one step back!” the crowd shouted back.

“Forward together!”

“Not one step back!”

In April 2014, Flint switched from Detroit city water to the corrosive water in the Flint river. Luster remembers – it happened on her daughter’s birthday. She and her nine-year-old daughter (then seven) quickly became sick. By July, she had collapsed at her job as a retail manager. Even today, strange, unexplained health effects remain.

Luster, 43, has had part of her uterus removed, an unexplained abscess taken from her left breast, and a lymph node removed from her right underarm and back. She has lost a five-gallon bag’s worth of hair.

Now, she is a full-time organizer with Flint Rising, and is considering law school. And almost two years after the crisis made national headlines, Luster still does everything in her Flint home with bottled water – cooking, washing hands, and even seemingly innocuous tasks, like ironing. She filters bottled water to drink.

By this summer, the state of Michigan alone will have provided 157m bottles of water to Flint and counting. Once, a news crew counted how many 16.9-ounce bottles Luster’s household used in a day – 151. “So now you see, when I see a bottle of water, I don’t see, ‘Let me go get a drink.’”

http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/fat-political-issue

There are now more than 700 million obese people worldwide, 108 million of them children, reported the New York Times recently. In Brazil, food giant Nestle sends vendors door to door hawking its high-calorie junk food and giving customers a full month to pay for their purchases. Such a deal. Nestle calls the junk food hawkers, who are themselves obese, "micro-entrepreneurs." Right.

Big Food is increasing targeting poor countries as "emerging markets" to please shareholders, supplanting their indigenous diets with fast food, packaged goods and soft drinks. In addition to creating obesity, diabetes, heart disease and chronic illnesses, the junk food supplants subsistence agriculture crops with sugar cane and GMO corn and soybeans. Even philanthropic groups like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have drunk Big Food's Kool-aid about GMOs "feeding the world." Actually, GMOs drench the fields of poor communities with toxic pesticides and pollute their waters.

Nestle's exploitation of the poor goes back more than 40 years when it convinced poor mothers to reject their own breast milk––the one thing poor mothers actually have to give their babies–– in favor of its infant formula. Activist groups say babies die in poor areas of Asia, Africa and Latin America because their mothers bottle-feed them with Western-style infant milk.

In Brazil, meat giant JBS and Coca-Cola have donated millions to congressional campaigns and McDonald’s $561,000, effectively burying dialogue about the health of junk food and its role in obesity. A few years ago, Reuters reported that the World Health Organization's Pan American Health Organization takes hundreds of thousands of dollars and "obesity" advice from junk food and soft drink companies. No wonder the advice stresses "exercise" and gives junk food ubiquity and its marketing to children and a pass.

Big Food also keeps America fat. A 2014 movie by Katie Couric called "Fed Up" exposed how the U.S. government admonishes people to eat right, while pushing the foods that make them fat, and how school lunchrooms have been bought by Big Food.

The film reveals how the egg, sugar and other Big Food industries revised guidelines generated from the 1977 McGovern Report that recommended people eat less foods high in fat and sugar to favor them and overruled Sen. McGovern.

In 2006, a similar Big Food triumph occurred. Faced with the United Nation’s WHO food recommendations that were similar to the McGovern Report, then Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Tommy G. Thompson actually flew to Geneva to threaten WHO that if the guidelines stood, the U.S. would withdraw its WHO financial support. Yes––U.S Ag was––and is––more important than world health.

In July, the New York Times revealed the devastating toll that junk food, obesity and diabetes have on poor people in Appalachia most of whom have minimal or no health care. People in Appalachia are sicker than in Central America, said Dr. Joseph Smiddy, a health volunteer in Virginia. “In Central America, they’re eating beans and rice and walking everywhere. They’re not drinking Mountain Dew and eating candy. They’re not having an epidemic of obesity and diabetes.” At least not until Nestle gets there.

In Chicago, there is a bitter fight over a recently instituted penny-per-ounce tax on sweetened beverages. The beverage industry has spent more than $1.4 million on television ads trying to reverse the decision and cast the desire to drink high-calorie, obesity-, diabetes- and dental cavity-producing soft drinks as "consumer choice." Poor communities, in Chicago and in the world, are the ones most hurt by soft drinks and the ones the beverage industry is now most desperately trying to enlist in the fight against the tax.

Someone on a typical 2,000-calorie-a-day diet should derive only 200 calories a day from sugar—equal to one 16-ounce soda. Yet most Americans consume at least twice the recommended amount and few people who have the soda “habit” only drink one soft drink a day.

Once upon a time, “sugar” meant sugar from sugar cane or sugar beets. But since 1980, soft drink producers have favored high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and they have been followed by most major food producers and processors. Trade restrictions in other countries to protect local sugar production made sugar more expensive to use even as U.S. farmers were growing copious amounts of corn because of farm subsidies. HFCS is also cheaper to produce, store and ship.

While HFCS is linked to obesity, diabetes, liver damage, memory problems and even possible mercury contamination, artificial sweeteners are not clearly better. An increase in the use of aspartame, found in Diet Coke, and sucralose, found in Pepsi One, actually correlated with a rise in the number of people who are obese, reported the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.

Whether in Brazil or Chicago, Big Food is succeeding in adding "poor health" to the plight of poor people.

mostly about water, but ur formula

The playbook in action for Nestle

Speaking at the April 1982 Public Affairs Council conference to his colleagues in the PR industry, Pagan revealed the skeleton of the playbook that would last all the way through the Stratfor days.

Mongoven was once a reporter for The Chicago Tribune and served as an executive editor of Pioneer Newspapers before becoming a spokesman for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and then the Republican National Committee.

“Women who were induced to use [the] formula in place of breast milk often had no choice but to dilute the formula with contaminated water, leading to diarrhea, dehydration and death among … infants,” explain John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton in their book, “Toxic SludgeIs Good for You! Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry.”

This behavior by Nestle created a global uproar and eventually planted the seeds of a boycott by more than 700 churches and activist groups.

Mongoven and Pagan — under the auspices of the Coordination Center for Nutrition, which shared office space with The Tobacco Institute, according to Legacy Tobacco Archive Library documents — decided the best response to the burgeoning social movement was to divide and conquer it.

One of their first strategies was to peel off some of strongest supporters of the anti-Nestle campaign — educators.

Nestle also won over an ally from the inside of another institutional opponent: churches.

“To counter the churches involved in the boycott, they needed to find a strong church that would take their side,” Stauber and Rampton further explained. “The United Methodists were supporting the boycott, but through negotiations and piecemeal concessions, Nestle gradually succeeded in winning them over.”

For his successful efforts running what he would later describe as “a responsive, accurate corporate issue and trends warning system [with] analysis capability,” Pagan received the Public Relations Society of America’s prestigious **Silver Anvil**Award. Other industries have followed similar strategies, such as the shale gas industry’s “Energy in Depth” and corporate education reform’s “Stand for Children.”

Nestlé and Coca-Cola Attempt to Block National Parks From Banning Bottled Water Sales11/16.

Nestlé Can Keep Piping Water Out of Drought-Stricken California Despite Permit Expiring in 1988 9/16

California’s Drought Policy Serves Corporations First, People Second

California is suffering a historic drought with no relief in sight. According to the latest report from NASA, California has less than a year’s supply of surface water left. In an executive order, Governor Jerry Brown, a self-proclaimed climate leader, imposed a 25% reduction on the state’s local water supply agencies, which serve 90% of California’s residents. Everyday citizens are being asked to cut down on shower times and lawn watering. While these are worthy efforts, they are mere drops in the bucket considering that residential and municipal use of water in CA account for less than 20% of water consumption. Instead of getting at the root of the problem and targeting water-guzzling agribusiness and the oil and gas industry, Governor Brown’s climate policy is pro-corporate, irresponsible and unsustainable.

Despite the growing water crisis, there are no provisions in Brown’s water reduction plan to halt fracking, an extreme method of oil and gas extraction requiring high-pressure injection of millions of gallons of chemical-laced water and sand into deep rock setting free oil or natural gas unavailable through conventional drilling. Last year fracking production in the state used 70 million gallons of water,1 the equivalent of 514 households annually.2 Although proponents of fracking may claim that the combined water use of 514 households is not that high, water used in fracking is highly contaminated and not returned to the annual water cycle, unlike household wastewater.

It was recently learned that California officials allowed oil and gas companies to dump this contaminated water into federally protected aquifers that could have been used for drinking and irrigation purposes.3 Illustrating the corporate control of regulatory agencies, 46 percent of the state permits authorizing these practices were granted in the last four years, the same four years during which the EPA warned California regulators they were not doing enough to protect underground water reserves.

In the Central Valley, many Latina/o farmworkers are struggling for their livelihoods due to years of drought. As a result of last year’s extreme weather, 17,000 farmworker jobs and 400,000 acres of farmland were lost.4 Other Californians are living entirely without running water. In East Porterville, for example, people are turning to costly and environmentally destructive bottled water to meet household needs.5

We can also look at Nestle Corporation’s privatization of our water to further understand how corporate rule is impacting every Californian. In Sacramento, tens of millions of gallons of Sacramento municipal water are being withdrawn by a local Nestle plant. Nestle uses and bottles thousands of acre-feet of California water. An acre-foot, roughly speaking, equals 326,000 gallons, enough to supply a family’s yearly needs.

Nestle and other bottling companies buy water at a pittance and sell it back to the public at exorbitantly high rates. As California’s water disappears, the investment portfolios of some of the nation’s most profitable corporations are being flooded.

In a recent interview Nestle CEO Tim Brown was asked if halting waster extraction was in the company’s plans. Brown responded: “Absolutely not. In fact, if I could increase it, I would. …If I stop bottling water tomorrow, people would buy another brand of bottled water. ...It’s driven by consumer demand, it’s driven by an on-the-go society that needs to hydrate.” 6

Is it possible that CEO Brown never heard of a reusable drinking water bottle?

Out of this Nestle Corporation debacle, the “Crunch Nestle Alliance” formed. The group has singled out Sacramento City Hall, saying Nestle’s privatization was made possible through a “corporate welfare giveaway.” Nestle pays Sacramento $186.00 per 215,000 gallons of water taken from the area aquifers. Those 215,000 gallons bring the Nestle Corporation a whopping $2.1 million in profit.7 The Crunch Nestle Alliance has successfully blockaded a Sacramento Nestle plant several times, raising awareness that water is a human right not a commodity to sell on the open markets.

Notes

1 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/03/us-california-drought-fracking-exclusive-idUSKBN0MU01M20150403

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/02/fracking-california-water_n_6997324.html

2 http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/04/06/3643184/california-70-million-gallons-fracking/

3 http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/02/05/ap-oil-drilling-waste-dumped-into-calif-aquifers-used-for-irrigation-drinking-water/

4 http://fusion.net/story/114463/as-california-goes-dry-latinos-suffer-disproportionately/

5 http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/20/east-porterville-california-drought-bottled-water-showers-toilets

6 "Starbucks Moves Ethos Water from California after Drought-shaming" The Washington Post, May 12, 2015

7 https://criticl.me/post/crunchnestle-alliance-1179

http://ecowatch.com/2016/07/02/nestle-bottle-water-drought-ridden-phoenix/

...

According to the Associated Press, Nestlé Waters will treat the city’s tap water and bottle it under its Pure Life brand. The plan is to extract about 35 million gallons of water in its first year to produce 264 million half-liter bottles.

The city’s water services department insists there’s enough water to spare, even though Arizona is in the midst of a historic drought. As Bloomberg writes:

Phoenix produced about 95 billion gallons of water in 2015. It gets more than half from Arizona’s Salt and Verde rivers, and a little less than that from a Colorado River diversion, some of which is piped into storage aquifers for emergency use. About 2 percent is groundwater. The Nestlé plant would use about 35 million gallons (or 264 million half-liter bottles) when it opens in the spring, or about 0.037 percent of the volume that comes out of the city’s plants and wells. So with that kind of math, and all the demand for bottled water among thirsty Phoenicians, it looks like there’s plenty to go around—even enough for Nestlé to pour out of the tap, bottle and sell for a few bucks.

Unsurprisingly, many people are wondering why it is necessary to bottle water in the middle of a desert when Arizonans can just drink it from the tap.

“Arizona is in drought conditions and with more people moving here each day it is imperative that we do everything we can to conserve water,” a Change.org petition signed by nearly 45,000 people states. “Even on the City of Phoenix website, we are reminded that the future of our city water supply is uncertain.”

A Facebook group has also been formed to protest the proposed plant.

“This plant approval further reveals the breathtaking duplicity of city managers as they attempt to force residents to implement water conservation measures,” wrote Dr. Anton G. Camarota, an Arizona resident and a member of the Facebook group.

“The managers state that ‘by watering your lawn wisely, you can conserve a precious resource and save money on your water bill,’ and ‘it is important to conserve water as a lifestyle. It’s everyone’s job to think about water … every time you use it … and use it responsibly.’ At the same time that they promulgate these platitudes, they are selling water to a private company for profit. The managers fail to see that water is not merely a lifestyle choice, in the deserts of Arizona it is the difference between life and death.”

Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the U.S., provides water to Arizona, California, Nevada and Mexico. In May, water levels shrunk to 37 percent full—the lowest it has ever been. Water levels could dip even further as climate change unfolds, triggering mandatory restrictions. Federal water managers warned that they might have to temporarily reduce Arizona’s allotment in 2018.

Lake Mead Drops to Lowest Level in History https://t.co/ofeodsFwbx @robintransition @ClimateCentral

— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) May 24, 2016

Sucking up the city’s precious resource is not the only concern. Americans are now drinking water from these single-use plastic items more than soda, potentially creating mounds of plastic waste if the bottles are not properly recycled.

Bloomberg reported that Nestlé’s chose to build a plant in Phoenix to cut down transportation costs of moving water into the region. Other factors included water quantity, water quality, regulatory burdens, local concerns and Nestlé’s corporate perspective, according to Nelson Switzer, chief sustainability officer of Nestlé Waters.

“We want to be where people want us,” Switzer said. Gauging a community’s welcome (or lack thereof) is a part of the process. “If all of those things together make sense, then we can site,” he continued. The plant is expected to create between 40 to 50 jobs.

The company said water scarcity is a real concern, and “in areas where population growth is threatening to exceed available water supplies, the concern is heightened.”

If Nestlé builds the plant, Phoenix will be home to four bottle plants, including Pepsi Bottling Co., Niagara Bottling and DS Services of America.

Nestlé is also facing opposition over bottling plants from communities in San Bernardino, California, Hood River County, Oregon and Eldred Township, Pennsylvania.

Last month, college-bound student Hannah Rousey of Lovell, Maine turned down a $1,000 scholarship money from Nestlé subsidiary Poland Spring‬ due to her objections to bottled water and the company’s environmentally destructive practices.

College-Bound Student Rejects Scholarship From Nestlé's Bottled Water Company https://t.co/mAKi23j8on @sierraclub @greenpeaceusa @NRDC @350

5/16

For 28 years, the U.S. Forest Service allowed Nestlé to pump water out of the San Bernardino National Forest under an expired permit, virtually free of charge. It was not only outrageous -- it was illegal. And last year, Courage Campaign and our partners at Story of Stuff sued to stop it.

So now what's their solution? They want to give Nestlé a new permit, so they can legally keep taking our water for five more years.(1)

Over our dead bodies. We've launched a campaign to make sure that permit never gets approved. Will you chip in today?

http://act.couragecampaign.org/go/3002?t=5&akid=2722.1986283.fZ8AxA

, Nestlé has been illegally pumping up to 28 million gallons of water a year from the San Bernardino National Forest, virtually free of charge.

Last October, we sued to stop them -- but now we're being denied access to the documents we need to prove our case.

Based on the facts, this should be an open and shut case. But the lawyers on the other side are fighting us tooth and nail to drag it out -- and in the meantime, Nestlé is STILL pumping water every day, devastating vulnerable plants and animals in the area.

We will NOT let Nestlé get away with taking our water, but the longer this goes on, the more our legal bills pile up. Will you donate to help make sure we have the resources to take on this fight and win?

he U.S. Forest Service on Friday proposed to issue a new permit to Nestle that would allow the bottled water producer to keep piping water out of the San Bernardino National Forest.

The five-year permit would allow Nestle to operate its wells and pipelines in the mountains near San Bernardino and would require the company to conduct studies on the water supplies and habitats in the area.

The proposal is part of a process under the National Environmental Policy Act that also involves a 45-day period for receiving public comments and an environmental analysis that will be carried out by a team the agency has formed for the review.

“Once we receive all those comments, then we do an environmental analysis,” said John Heil, a Forest Service press officer. “We take the public comments into account as we do the environmental analysis.”

After that review, he said, the Forest Service will reach a decision on whether to issue the permit.

The Forest Service announced the proposal one year after a Desert Sun investigation revealed Nestle has been drawing water from the national forest using a permit that lists 1988 as the expiration date. Nestle Waters North America bottles water from the forest as Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water.

**Read the investigation:** Bottling water without scrutiny

Nestle’s use of water from the national forest has stirred controversy, especially during California’s severe drought. Three environmental groups sued the Forest Service in October, arguing that the agency has violated the law by letting the company pipe out millions of gallons without a valid permit, and that the taking of water threatens sensitive habitat along Strawberry Creek near San Bernardino.

The Forest Service said in December that officials had started assessing the renewal of the 1978 permit and had assigned a team for the environmental analysis.

kid obesity

The effort to defeat the tougher food standards heated up late last spring and summer, when lobbyists said they went on high alert.

On July 12, White House visitor logs show a who's who of food company chief executives and lobbyists visited the White House. The group met with Valerie Jarrett, Obama's senior adviser, and Melody Barnes, then director of the president's Domestic Policy Council. Among the group at the meeting: CEOs of Nestle USA, Kellogg, General Mills, and top executives at Walt Disney, Time Warner, and Viacom, owner of the Nickelodeon children's channel -- companies with some of the biggest financial stakes in marketing to children. Those companies have a combined market value of more than $350 billion.

Two people who attended -- lobbyist Scott Faber of the Grocery Manufacturers Association and Kolish of the Better Business Bureau -- said the group told the White House that it opposed government action and favored voluntary initiatives. Other participants and the White House have declined to describe the meeting or did not respond to requests for comment.

===

http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/08/brazil-fines-nestle-pepsi-gmos/

http://action.storyofstuff.org/sign/nestle_water_privatization_push/

Recently, nearly 200,000 CREDO activists joined together to tell the U.S Forest Service to stop Nestle from pumping water out of a national forest in drought-stricken California. That helped put a spotlight on Nestle and launched a round of intense media scrutiny. But instead of deciding to do the right thing, as other companies like Starbucks¹ have done in the face of the drought, Nestle’s CEO decided to dig in and double down. When questioned in a recent radio interview about whether they would consider halting their water extraction, Nestle CEO Tim Brown stated: “Absolutely not. In fact, if I could increase it, I would.”²

Apparently, Nestle’s CEO has spent so much time focusing on driving up Nestle’s profits at any cost that he’s apparently lost any sense of corporate responsibility when it comes to bottling water. So this time we need to up the pressure even more by sending a message directly to Nestle.

:{Tell Nestle CEO Tim Brown: Exercise some corporate responsibility and end your water profiteering in drought-stricken California. Click here to sign the petition.:(style="font-weight:700"):}:

Unfortunately, Brown’s out-of-touch comments didn’t end there. In the same interview, he went so far as to blame consumers for Nestle’s practices, at one point stating, “If I stop bottling water tomorrow, people would buy another brand of bottled water...It’s driven by consumer demand, it’s driven by an on-the-go society that needs to hydrate.” Apparently he’s never heard of a re-usable water bottle.

Perhaps it’s not a complete surprise to see Nestle respond in such a tone-deaf manner by passing the buck and shirking responsibility. After all, this is the same corporation whose CEO once famously challenged the human right to water. During that same year, Nestle fought a decision by the Ministry of the Environment in Ontario, Canada that would limit its water-taking in times of severe drought.³

"Starbucks moves Ethos water from California after droughtshaming" The Washington Post, May 12, 2015
"Nestlé Waters CEO isn't stopping bottling in California, says new tech will save millions of gallons" Southern California Public Radio, May 14, 2015
"Organizations Denounce Nestle’s New Human Rights Impact Assessment as a Public Relations Stunt," Food & Water Watch, December 19, 2013.

http://www.newsweek.com/nestles-california-water-permit-expired-27-years-ago-321940

Last month, California newspaper The Desert Sun published an investigation revealing that Nestlé Water’s permit to transport water across the San Bernardino National Forest for bottling has been expired since 1988. On Friday, the U.S. Forest Service announced it would make it “a priority” to reassess the permit, and that it might impose as-of-yet unspecified “interim conditions” on the bottling operation in light of the severe drought, The Desert Sun reports.

The fact that Nestlé has continued its massive water-bottling operation while the state struggles with crippling water shortages has become a sticking point for activists. A petition demanding Nestlé immediately stop bottling and profiting off California water has drawn 27,000 online signatures and counting, and last month activists reportedly blocked the entrances to Nestlé’s bottling plant in Sacramento.

Another investigation published last year by The Desert Sun found that after 2009, Nestlé Waters stopped submitting annual reports to local water districts about how much groundwater the company extracted for bottling. Since then, the local San Gorgonio Pass Water Agency has listed “a rounded estimate” in its own reports of 750 acre-feet, or 244 million gallons of water, extracted by Nestlé per year, according to the Sun. Reuters reports the company drew 50 million gallons from the Sacramento area alone last year

No state agency is tracking exactly how much water is used by the 108 private water-bottling plants in California (of which Nestlé operates five), according to the Sun. Although Nestlé submits reports on its water usage to the Forest Service, the Service has not been closely tracking the volume of water leaving the San Bernardino National Forest, or the way the extraction impacts the environment, the Sun writes.

In response to the online petition, Nestlé Waters North America issued a statement saying that it used 705 million gallons of water last year, which the company says is about the same amount of water needed to irrigate two golf courses.

“While responsible management is expected and essential, bottled water is such a small user that to focus on our industry as a material concern in water policy debates is misguided,” the statement read.

The latest Suninvestigation also notes that the California Forest Service has never monitored the impacts of the bottled water business on streams in two watersheds that Nestlé draws from, which supply water to sensitive wildlife habitats. The Forest Service now says it plans to carry out an environmental analysis of the operations.

“Now that it has been brought to my attention that the Nestlé permit has been expired for so long, on top of the drought ... it has gone to the top of the pile in terms of a program of work for our folks to work on,” San Bernardino National Forest Supervisor Jody Noiron told the Sun.

Renewing Nestlé’s permit could take up to 18 months, or more than two years, according to Noiron.

Nestlé says its bottling of spring water from the national forest isn't causing environmental harm, and that it manages its water use for sustainability. A spokesperson told the Sunthat the company plans to work with the Forest Service to facilitate the permit renewal.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/activists-shut-down-nestle-water-bottling-plant-sacramento

Environmental and human rights activists, holding plastic “torches” and “pitchforks,” formed human barricades at both entrances to the Nestlé Waters bottling plant in Sacramento at 5:00 a.m. on Friday, March 20, effectively shutting down the company's operations for the day.

Members of the “Crunch Nestlé Alliance" shouted out a number of chants, including ”We got to fight for our right to water,” “Nestlé, Stop It, Water Not For Profit," and “¿Agua Para Quien? Para Nuestra Gente.”

The protesters stayed until about 1 pm, but there were no arrests.

Representatives of the alliance said the company is draining up to 80 million gallons of water a year from Sacramento aquifers during a record drought. They claim Sacramento City Hall has made it possible through a "corporate welfare giveaway."

“This corporate welfare giveaway is an outrage and warrants a major investigation,” Coalition spokesperson Andy Conn said. “For more than five months we have requested data on Nestlé water use. City Hall has not complied with our request, or given any indication that it will. Sacramentans deserve to know how their money is being spent and what they’re getting for it. In this case, they’re getting ripped off.”

Lola Ellis of 99 Rise Sacramento, who spoke on the bullhorn at the protest, said, “Nestlé’s bottling of water in Sacramento is unsustainable in the current state of drought. We really don’t’ know how much water they are taking from the aquifer and that is a scary thing.”

“The water needs to be used for the local community. If there is not enough water for the local community, the Nestlé corporation should not be making a profit,” she emphasized.

The coalition protested what they call Nestlé's “virtually unlimited use of water” while Sacramentans (like other Californians) who use a mere 7 to 10 percent of total water used in the State of California, have had severe restrictions and limitations forced upon them.

The coalition is calling on Nestlé to pay rates commensurate with its enormous profit, or voluntarily close down.

“Nestlé pays only 65 cents for each 470 gallons it pumps out of the ground – the same rate as an average residential water user. But the company can turn the area's water around, and sell it back to Sacramento at mammoth profit,” according to a news release from the activists.

They said Sacramento officials have refused attempts to obtain details of Nestlé's water use. Coalition members have addressed the Sacramento City Council and requested that Nestlé either pay a commercial rate under a two tier level, or pay a tax on its profit.

A call to the Sacramento City Department of Utilities about the details of Nestlés water use hadn’t been returned as of press time.

But according to Fox 40 News, “In 2014 Nestlé says it used 50 million gallons from the Sacramento Municipal Water Supply, which they say is a fraction of one percent of total water demand within the city of Sacramento.” (http://fox40.com/... [3])

A statement issued by the company in October 2014 regarding a previous protest in front of the plant said:

"In Sacramento, Nestlé Waters North America purchases and pays the standard metered rate for municipal water, which is delivered through the municipal pipe system. We are not ranked among the top 10 water users in Sacramento as we use about two thousandths of one percent (0.0016%) of Sacramento’s total water demand. Our company is subject to any restrictions, drought or otherwise, imposed on all light industrial or business customers by the city of Sacramento and we comply with those restrictions." (http://www.scribd.com/... [4])

Bob Saunders, also with the Crunch Nestlé Alliance, responded, "Nestlé can claim any amount of water they want, but we haven’t seen any documentation of the amount of water they’re using. We do know they’re allowed to take up to 80 million gallons per year.”

Mauro Oliveira, known as "Red Sun," showed up at the protest with his children, including Rise, Aren and Mahai'a, and connected the battle of local activists against Nestlé with the struggle of Indian Tribes, family farmers, grassroots environmental activists and fishermen to stop fracking, the Shasta Dam raise, and Governor Jerry Brown’s Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the twin tunnels, the most environmentally destructive public works project in California history.

“This whole idea of bottling water goes against Indigenous Peoples' concept of water is sacred," said Oliveira. "The 20,000-year-old water in aquifers belongs to the last generation on earth. We don’t have the right to tap into this water.”

“The Governor said we should conserve, but millions of gallons of fracking waste are being reinjected into the aquifer in California. The Governor talks out of both sides of his mouth. Polluting our water supplies is a violation of human rights," said Oliveira.

Around the world, private firms have been given “carte blanche rights to mine local groundwater supplies at the expense of local populations, say experts.” In 1997, Swiss food giant Nestlé signed a contract with the privately- owned water services provider in Fryeburg, Maine, to buy freshwater in bulk for its Poland Spring brand of bottled water. Fearing that large-scale commercial water exploitation would lead to groundwater depletion and the Saco River drying up, the town of Fryeburg enacted a Land Use Ordinance that required that any company pumping more than 10,000 gallons of water a day get approval from the planning board. With a constant stream of litigation and appeals, however, Fryeburg Water Co. was able to buy time while continuing its moneymaking sideline business without interruption.

:{Read more:(style="outline:none"):}:

Center for Food Safety[1] / By Michele Simon [2]

Junk Food Lobby Forced to Disclose Secret Donors in Campaign to Stop GMO Labeling

October 23, 2013 |

Just a few weeks ago, attorneys for the No on 522 campaign were feeling rather smug when a lawsuit filed against them by a group called “Moms for Labeling” was dismissed. As I wrote last week [3], consumer class action attorney Knoll Lowney sued the No on 522 and the Washington DC-based Grocery Manufactures Association (lobbyists for major food corporations) for not disclosing the donors behind GMA’s $7 million-plus donation to stop I-522, which would require genetically-engineered foods to be labeled. The judge threw out that case on a technicality.

But then, Big Food’s arrogance got the best of them.

Last Wednesday, Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson picked up where the Moms for Labeling lawyer left off by filing his own complaint [4], which adds stunning detail to the allegations in the original suit. In case you’re not familiar with what the attorney general does, he or she is the state’s top law enforcer, but often has limited resources to act. So when the AG’s office decides to come after you, it’s a very big deal, far bigger than a private attorney doing so.

The new lawsuit also accuses GMA of violating the state’s campaign disclosure laws, and alleges that the trade group secretly gathered more than $7 million from its members. Not content to just collect food industry money illegally, or even discreetly, GMA had the chutzpah to a designate a special account dubbed the “Defense of Brand Strategic Account,” for a strategic, “multi-pronged approach” to fight labeling laws, including Washington’s I-522.

And this scheme didn’t just pop up recently either; rather the shady deal-making was in the works for months, soon after the narrow loss of Proposition 37 in California. The plan was hatched at a GMA board meeting this past January to fund future anti-labeling efforts with “a preference for GMA to be the funder of such efforts, rather than individual companies.” That’s because brand names like PepsiCo and General Mills took a lot of heat from upset consumers. So, as GMA CEO Pamela G. Bailey explained in a February memorandum, a plan to “better shield individual companies from attack” was quickly approved; GMA sent its first round of invoices to members by March and the second round went out in August.

The dollar figures are staggering: GMA earmarked ten million dollars to oppose I-522, meaning that when the trade group made its first contribution to No on 522 in May—a paltry $472,500—it knew it was only getting started, something the public would learn by August when it donated another $1,750,000. In September, GMA dropped $5 million in one load, which now makes sense considering how long they had been taking collections. But if the two lawsuits hadn’t stopped GMA, chances are it would have spent even more. As of October 7, GMA collected almost $13.5 million dollars but had only spent $7.2 million, meaning it still has more than $6 million left in its arsenal. That can buy a lot of TV ads.

In fact, Attorney General Ferguson said [5] this case represents “the largest amount of money ever concealed in an election.” Way to go team.

Barely 48 hours after the attorney general filed suit, GMA waved a white flag [6], disclosing the list of donors [7] it had so adamantly refused to give Moms for Labeling. Topping the list were old favorites like PepsiCo ($1.6+ million), Nestlé ($1+ million), Coca-Cola ($1+ million), and General Mills (almost $600K). But all the major food groups are also represented. Not only soda companies, but also Sunny Delight and the juice bottler Clement Pappas & Company are named. For canned foods, GMA hit up Del Monte and Hormel Foods, maker of Spam. And who knew that the Clorox Company owns Soy Vay marinades [8], which explains its $12K donation to the Defense of Brand Strategic Account.

Before releasing its list of donors, though, GMA put out a statement [9] saying it was “surprised to learn that the Washington State authorities viewed the association’s actions as improper.” Maybe GMA’s lawyers (aren’t they all lawyers?) were too busy making a paper trail of its wrongdoing to read up on the state campaign finance laws they were so sloppily trying to circumvent.

Then, when GMA released the donor data (on Friday at 3pm, wonder why?), the lobbyists had the nerve to claim [10] to be doing so “in the spirit of continuing cooperation and in an effort to provide Washington voters with full transparency.” That’s the spirit. But even more impressive was GMA’s decision to “voluntarily establish a Washington State political committee and to file reports disclosing the source of all funds used in connection with Washington State elections.” Let’s unpack that: GMA is volunteering to follow the law after the state’s top law enforcer sued them to stop violating it.

Meanwhile, Lowney and Moms for Labeling aren’t done yet. Yesterday, Lowney filed another suit [11], incorporating the attorney general’s allegations, and asking the judge to “sequester” the same amount No on 522 illegally concealed – more than $7 million – to pay future penalties.

In the new complaint [12], No on 522 is not only accused of concealing the source of its donations, but also intentionally misleading Washington voters by falsely reporting the source of the $7.2 million. Not satisfied with the disclosures made last week, this suit wants the court to order No on 522 to: 1) stop running advertisements that don’t reflect the accurate top five contributors; 2) admit that earlier disclosures were false and disseminate corrected information; 3) file corrected campaign finance reports; 4) discontinue receipt of contributions from GMA; and (my personal favorite) 5) pay a penalty in the amount of the contributions it concealed – more than $7.2 million.

GMA hasn’t responded to that suit yet, but in the meantime, Ferguson’s office isn’t backing down [13] after the initial disclosures either. Janelle Guthrie, communications director for the Washington State attorney general’s office told me that the state’s “lawsuit continues with regard to setting penalties.”

The Moms for Labeling lawsuit highlights the important role that private litigation has in getting state officials to force Big Food’s compliance with the law and big kudos to the attorney general for doing so. Let’s hope we see more of it.

And if you’re keeping score, that makes three lawsuits filed so far against an industry that will stop at nothing to keep consumers in the dark. Washington State voters should really be asking, when they see the next ad opposing 522: if this campaign is willing to break the law, how can we trust anything they say?

Meanwhile, it’s not too late to help the Yes on 522 campaign [14].

See more stories tagged with:

gmo [15],

labeling [16],

food [17],

right to know [18]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/food/junk-food-lobby-forced-disclose-secret-donors-campaign-stop-gmo-labeling

http://www.alternet.org/print/world/torture-and-murder-colombian-union-leader-sparks-scrutiny-corporate-giant-nestle

AlterNet [1] / By James Bargent [2]

Torture and Murder of Colombian Union Leader Sparks Scrutiny of Corporate Giant Nestle

May 17, 2013 |

On the night of September 5, 2005, two paramilitaries from the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia hijacked Luciano Romero’s taxi as he drove through his home city of Valledupar. They took him to a nearby farm, where they tortured then murdered him. His body was found the next day, dumped behind an army garrison, with a handkerchief stuffed in his mouth and50 stab wounds; one more victim in Colombia’s dirty war against trade unionists.

However, seven years on, and while Romero may only be one of approximately 3,000 victims of that war, his murder is now taking center stage in a legal battle to define corporate responsibility in conflict zones. This battle is taking place not in Colombia, but in Switzerland, home to one of the world’s biggest multi-nationals and Romero’s former employers – Nestle.

The struggle to hold Nestle accountable for its alleged role in Romero’s death began with the 2007 conviction of Romero’s killers – itself a rarity in a country with a 95% impunity rate in unionist murders. When passing sentence, Judge José Nirio Sánchez ordered an investigation into the intellectual authors of the crime that would scrutinize the role of not only the paramilitary warlord who commanded Romero’s killers, but also the management at the Nestle subsidiary where Romero worked

While that investigation has yet to show any sign of progress, the case has been taken up by Romero’s union, SINALTRAINAL, and human rights group the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR). In 2012, the organizations filed a criminal complaint in Switzerland demanding the prosecution of Nestle for Romero’s murder.

The powdered milk factory where Romero worked, CICOLAC, was Nestlé’s first investment in Colombia, when it opened the site in 1944. The multi-national sold CICOLAC in 1982, only to buy it back again in 1998. At the time of Nestlé’s return to Valledupar, the northern state of Cesar, where the city is located, was under the control of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitary army.

According to the testimonies of demobilized AUC leaders, the paramilitaries had been invited into the region by members of the region’s economic elite, who were tired of the campaign of constant harassment, kidnappings and extortion waged by leftist guerilla groups. Cesar became a fiefdom of Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias ‘Jorge 40,’ a member of Valledupar high society whose paramilitary empire stretched across north east Colombia.

The Cesar paramilitary block commanded by Jorge 40 was financed by the region’s cattle ranchers, dairy farmers and other land owners and economic interests. Among them was CICOLAC – according to AUC Leader Salvatore Mancuso, who named the company in the hearings that followed the demobilization of the AUC in 2006.

The paramilitaries in Cesar employed their favored terror tactics in the battle against the guerrillas, and launched a dirty war against anyone they deemed a guerrilla “collaborator” – community leaders, leftist activists, educators and, above all, unionists.

In 1993, Harry Triana became the first CICOLAC unionist in Valledupar to fall victim to that war when killed in front of his children and work colleagues. The next came in 1996, when José Manuel Becerra Pacheco was beheaded and Alejandro Matias Vanstrahlen was shot. The following year, Toribio De La Hoz was shot while celebrating his 42nd birthday in his home and in 1999 Victor Mieles and his wife were abducted in front of one of Nestlé’s Cesar factories and later murdered.

Despite the violence, Luciano Romero emerged as a leading figure in the local union movement. “He was a person who had really absorbed the union’s values,” said Alfonso Baron, a friend of Romero’s and a local SINALTRAINAL leader who has worked at CICOLAC since 1986. “He was a good friend, a good companion, he showed solidarity and fraternity, he was respectful, a hard worker and he looked out for others.”

However, Romero’s activities soon attracted unwanted attentions. In 1988, the Colombian judicial police abducted Romero and tortured him in a secret prison for a week, according to a legal statement submitted by the unionist. By the late nineties, Romero’s work at the union and social activism had attracted the attentions of the paramilitaries, and he started receiving death threats.

The relationship between Romero and CICOLAC was strained. In 1999, a bomb went off at the factory, injuring one person – Luciano Romero. The company CEO, Carlos Fajardo, accused Romero of planting the bomb. The implication – that Romero was working with guerrillas – did not go unnoticed. It was a slur the union heard time and again from the company management, and especially from Fajardo.

“When someone says we are guerrillas it is dangerous,” said Baron. “In this country saying these things publically is risky because you don’t know who is there, who is listening, who is talking.”

The smear persisted even after Romero’s death but was finally laid to rest by the judge in the trial of Romero’s killers, who dismissed attempts to link Romero to the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) as unfounded.

As well as the accusations the union worked with the guerrillas, Fajardo also hinted at his own connections to the paramilitaries. “To ingratiate himself with the union he would ring us up and warn us to be careful because we’re going to ‘see some things’” said Baron. Fajardo warned union members several times that Romero was on a death list, once saying he could protect the unionist as long as he remained at the company, according to witnesses.

The relationship between Romero and the company began to break down terminally in 2002, when Romero led taut negotiations over an expiring labor agreement. What should have been standard negotiations quickly descended into a crisis. “It was a very tense situation,” said Baron. “The company launched an attack to strip away all our social and economic rights.”

The union began to prepare for a strike. Within days, the paramilitaries began running night patrols and distributing threatening leaflets, and word reached the unionists that if they went on strike they would be killed. Rumors of a death list with Luciano Romero’s name on it began to circulate.

According to witnesses, notorious paramilitaries appeared at the factory when the union was holding protest meetings. Among them was Hughes Rodriguez Fuentes, also known as “Comandante Barbie.”

Rodriguez was a finance chief for the AUC’s Martierres War Front of Cesar – the paramilitary unit that Romero’s assassins belonged to. The authorities in both Colombia and the United States believe he was a trusted ally of Jorge 40, and one of the warlord’s principal money launderers and fund raisers. He was also one of CICOLAC’s milk suppliers, and, according to witnesses, a personal friend of Carlos Fajardo.

During the labor dispute, the CICOLAC management told Rodriguez and the other milk suppliers that the union’s labor demands would push down milk prices while a strike would lead to the closure of the plant.

Also among those CICOLAC milk suppliers was Hernando Molina Araujo, a future Governor of Cesar, whose term was cut short after he conspired with the AUC to assassinate a local university professor. Another was Gustavo Gnecco, member of an infamous family of local power brokers who moved easily between the worlds of legitimate business and the drug trade, politics and paramilitarism.

With tensions building and violence looking likely, the union cancelled the strike. Not long after, Romero was one of nine workers, six of them union leaders, fired by CICOLAC – illegally according to the union. Ten months later, the company fired 99% of the workforce, and sold CICOLAC to DPA – a company jointly owned byNestle and New Zealand based Fonterra. The workforce for the renamed DPA-CICOLAC was forced to accept reduced terms, and for many of them, temporary contracts. According to Baron, ten years and two rounds of labor negotiations later, workers still earn less than they did in 2002.

Despite the end of the dispute and Romero’s sacking, the threats against the union continued. In 2004, he went into exile through a protection program. However, he returned to Valledupar in 2005. “I would imagine his return was influenced by the emptiness of not being with his family, of not seeing his wife and children,” said Baron. “Being away from your home country is a form of slow death.”

By September, Romero was preparing to denounce Nestle as witness at the Permanent Peoples Tribunal in Switzerland. He was also working on the complaint he had filed against the company for unfair dismissal, and organizing a protest to commemorate the second anniversary of the mass lay off of the CICOLAC workers.

Just days before the protest was scheduled to take place, Jose Ustariz Acuña and Jhonatan David Contrera received orders from their AUC commanders to abduct, interrogate and murder an ELN guerrilla pretending to be a taxi driver by the name of Luciano Romero.

Neither the union nor ECCHR accuse Nestle of ordering Romero’s murder. However, they insist the company is responsible for his death. “The paramilitaries punished us precisely because we made demands of the company,” said Edgar Paez, a member of the union’s national leadership. “They have a very close relationship that does not permit us to exercise our right to organize, to unionize.”

Responsibility not only lies with the CICOLAC management but also with the Nestle parent company, according to Claudia Mueller-Hoff from ECCHR. “They are culpable because of omission, they had a duty to act, they had a duty to protect,” she said. “This risky behavior of the subsidiary is something where the Nestle parent company should have intervened because it was brought to their attention on several occasions.”

Nestle is far from the first multinational to be linked to anti-union violence and paramilitarism in Colombia and there have been investigations into subsidiaries of Chiquita, Drummond and Coca Cola. Mueller-Hoff though, is hoping this case will be different as it has the potential to help define what a company’s obligations are in conflict zones. “Parent companies need to look into their impact worldwide even if it’s an impact that is generated through their subsidiaries,” she said.

Nestle firmly denied it shares responsibility for Romero’s death. In a written statement for AlterNet, the company said: “We have never used violence, nor have we associated with criminals. We have no responsibility whatsoever, directly or indirectly, neither by action nor omission for the murder of Luciano Romero.”

However, Nestle declined to comment on the relationship between the CICOLAC management, the milk suppliers and paramilitaries, or on the accusations of reckless slander against the management, and the events of the labor dispute. It also declined to comment on Salvatore Mancuso’s testimony that CICOLAC had funded the AUC.

Progress in the case has so far been hampered by legal wrangling. In early May, the five Nestle executives named in the complaint avoided the possibility of prosecution when the statute of limitations for the crime expired after the Swiss courts had argued over jurisdiction for a year. “It seems to be an attempt to avoid dealing with the important legal questions at stake,” said Mueller-Hoff. “The Swiss public prosecutor has even fallen behind our relatively modest expectations.”

However, the ECCHR, SINALTRAINAL and Romero’s family are still optimistic the second target of the complaint – Nestle as a company – can still be prosecuted. Under Swiss law, the statute of limitations only begins for a company when it ends the practices it is accused of. According to SINALTRAINAL, this has yet to happen.

While Jorge 40 and the AUC have now demobilized, paramilitary successor groups, often led by former mid-level commanders, continue to terrorize unionists working at Nestle today.

In 2011, Roberto Gonzalez became the 13th Nestle unionist to be murdered when he was shot in the back in Valledupar. In 2012, 23 SINALTRAINAL members who are current or former Nestle workers received death threats.

“Every time there is a labor dispute, there is a leap in paramilitarism,” said Paez. “The threats come, people are followed, there are some really difficult security situations.”

Some of the threats received last year directly referenced protests SINALTRAINAL had led against Nestle, including one promising to “exterminate” the union for their campaign at Nestlé’s Bugalagrande factory. The tone of the threats has changed little since the paramilitary heyday and recipients remain, as in one threat sent by neo-paramilitary group the Urabeños, “guerrilla sons of bitches disguised as unionists.”

Paez believes the links between paramilitarism and the landowning elite who supply DPA-CICOLAC with milk have also changed little. “DPA is still buying milk and they buy this milk from these men, who in some way have connections to paramilitarism,” he said.

While the struggle to hold corporations accountable for their role in Colombia’s dirty war continues, those on the front lines of that war have little doubt as to who it has benefited from the violence. “In Luciano’s case who won?” said Baron. “The state won because there is one man less in the struggle, the company won because they benefited directly and above all, the bosses won because they managed to show that with violence you can bring an end to unionism.

nestle [3],

colombia [4]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/world/torture-and-murder-colombian-union-leader-sparks-scrutiny-corporate-giant-nestle

Links:

[1] http://www.alternet.org

[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/james-bargent

[3] http://www.alternet.org/tags/nestle

[4] http://www.alternet.org/tags/colombia-0

[5] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

-----

Two people who attended -- lobbyist Scott Faber of the Grocery Manufacturers Association and Kolish of the Better Business Bureau -- said the group told the White House that it opposed government action and favored voluntary initiatives. Other participants and the White House have declined to describe the meeting or did not respond to requests for comment.

http://andrewgavinmarshall.com [1] / By Andrew Gavin Marshall [2]

“Human Beings Have No Right to Water” and Other Words of Wisdom from Your Friendly Neighborhood Global Oligarch

April 23, 2013 |

In the 2005 documentary, We Feed the World, then-CEO of Nestlé, the world’s largest foodstuff corporation, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, shared some of his own views and ‘wisdom’ about the world and humanity. Brabeck believes that nature is not “good,” that there is nothing to worry about with GMO foods, that profits matter above all else, that people should work more, and that human beings do not have a right to water.

Today, he explained, “people believe that everything that comes from Nature is good,” marking a large change in perception, as previously, “we always learnt that Nature could be pitiless.” Humanity, Brabeck stated, “is now in the position of being able to provide some balance to Nature, but in spite of this we have something approaching a shibboleth that everything that comes from Nature is good.” He then referenced the “organic movement” as an example of this thinking, premising that “organic is best.” But rest assured, he corrected, “organic is not best.” In 15 years of GMO food consumption in the United States, “not one single case of illness has occurred.” In spite of this, he noted, “we’re all so uneasy about it in Europe, that something might happen to us.” This view, according to Brabeck, is [3].”

Water, Brabeck correctly pointed out, “is of course the most important raw material we have today in the world,” but added: “It’s a question of whether we should privatize the normal water supply for the population. And there are two different opinions on the matter. The one opinion, which I think is extreme, is represented by the NGOs, who bang on about declaring water a public right.” Brabeck elaborated on this “extreme” view: “That means that as a human being you should have a right to water. [3]” The other view, and thus, the “less extreme” view, he explained, “says that water is a foodstuff like any other, and like any other foodstuff it should have a market value. Personally I believe it’s better to give a foodstuff a value so that we’re all aware that it has its price, and then that one should take specific measures for the part of the population that has no access to this water, and there are many different possibilities there.” The biggest social responsibility of any CEO, Brabeck explained:

is to maintain and ensure the successful and profitable future of his enterprise. For only if we can ensure our continued, long term existence will we be in the position to actively participate in the solution of the problems that exist in the world. We’re in the position of being able to create jobs... If you want to create work, you have to work yourself, not as it was in the past where existing work was distributed. If you remember the main argument for the 35-hour week was that there was a certain amount of work and it would be better if we worked less and distributed the work amongst more people. That has proved quite clearly to be wrong. If you want to create more work you have to work more yourself. And with that we’ve got to create a positive image of the world for people, and I see absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t be positive about the future. We’ve never had it so good, we’ve never had so much money, we’ve never been so healthy, we’ve never lived as long as we do today. We have everything we want and we still go around as if we were in mourning for something.

While watching a promotional video of a Nestlé factory in Japan, Brabeck commented, “You can see how modern these factories are; highly robotized, [3].” And of course, for someone claiming to be interested in creating jobs, there appears to be no glaring hypocrisy in praising factories with “almost no people.”

It’s important to note that this is not simply the personal view of some random corporate executive, but rather, that it reflects an institutional reality of corporations: the primary objective of a corporation – above all else – is to maximize short-term profits for shareholders. By definition, then, workers should work more and be paid less, the environment is only a concern so much as corporations have unhindered access to control and exploit the resources of the environment, and ultimately, it’s ‘good’ to replace workers with automation and robotics so that you don’t have to pay fewer or any workers, and thus, maximize profits. With this institutional – and ideological – structure (which was legally constructed by the state), concern for the environment, for water, for the world and for humanity can only be promoted if it can be used to advance corporate profits, or if it can be used for public relations purposes. Ultimately, it has to be hypocritical. A corporate executive cannot take an earnest concern in promoting the general welfare of the world, the environment, or humanity, because that it not the institutional function of a corporation, and no CEO that did such would be allowed to remain as CEO.

This is why it matters what Peter Brabeck thinks: he represents the type of individual – and the type of thinking – that is a product of and a requirement for running a successful multinational corporation, of the corporate culture itself. To the average person viewing his interview, it might come across as some sort of absurd tirade you’d expect from aNightline interview with some infamous serial killer, if that killer had been put in charge of a multinational corporation:

People have a ‘right’ to water? What an absurd notion! Next thing you’ll say is that child labour is bad, polluting the environment is bad, or that people have some sort of ‘right’ to... life! Imagine the audacity! All that matters is ‘profits,’ and what a wonderful thing it would be to have less people and more profits! Water isn’t a right, it’s only a necessity, so naturally, it makes sense to privatize it so that large multinational corporations like Nestlé can own the world’s water and ensure that only those who can pay can drink. Problem solved!

Sadly, though intentionally satirical, this is the essential view of Brabeck and others like him. And disturbingly, Brabeck’s influence is not confined to the board of Nestlé. Brabeck became the CEO of Nestlé in 1997, a position he served until 2008, at which time he resigned as CEO but remained as chairman of the board of directors of Nestlé. Apart from Nestlé, Brabeck serves [4] as vice chairman of the board of directors of L’Oréal, the world’s largest cosmetics and ‘beauty’ company; vice chairman of the board of Credit Suisse Group, one of the world’s largest banks; and is a member of the board of directors of Exxon Mobil, one of the world’s largest oil and energy conglomerates.

He was also a former board member of one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical conglomerates, Roche [5]. Brabeck also serves as a member of the Foundation Board for the World Economic Forum (WEF), “the guardian [6] of [the WEF’s] mission, values and brand... responsible for inspiring business and public confidence through an exemplary standard of governance.” Brabeck is also a member of the European Round Table of Industrialists [7] (ERT), a group of European corporate CEOs which directly advise and help steer policy for the European Union and its member countries. He has also attended meetings of theBilderberg group [8], an annual forum of 130 corporate, banking, media, political and military elites from Western Europe and North America.

Thus, through his multiple board memberships on some of the largest corporations on earth, as well as his leadership and participation in some of the leading international think tanks, forums and business associations, Brabeck has unhindered access to political and other elites around the world. When he speaks, powerful people listen.

Brabeck’s Brain

Brabeck has become an influential voice on issues of food and water, and not surprisingly so, considering he is chairman of the largest food service corporation on earth. Brabeck’s career goes back to when he was working for Nestlé in Chile in the early 1970s, when the left-leaning democratically-elected president Salvador Allende was “threatening to nationalize milk production, and Nestlé’s Chilean operations [9] along with it.” A 1973 Chilean military coup – with the support of the CIA – put an end to that “threat” by bringing in the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, who murdered thousands of Chileans and established a ‘national security state’, imposing harsh economic measures to promote the interests of elite corporate and financial interests (what later became known as ‘neoliberalism’).

In a 2009 article for Foreign Policy magazine, Brabeck declared: “Water is the new gold [10], and a few savvy countries and companies are already banking on it.” In a 2010 article for the Guardian [11], Brabeck wrote that, “[w]hile our collective attention has been focused on depleting supplies of fossil fuels, we have been largely ignoring the simple fact that, unless radical changes are made, we will run out of water first, and soon.” What the world needs, according to Brabeck, is “to set a price that more accurately values our most precious commodity,” and that, [t]he era of water at throwaway prices is coming to an end.” In other words, water should become increasingly expensive, according to Brabeck. Countries, he wrote, should recognize “that not all water use should be regarded as equal.”

In a discussion with the Wall Street Journal in 2011, Brabeck spoke against the use of biofuels – converting food into fuel – and suggested that this was the primary cause of increased food prices (though in reality, food price increases are primarily the result of speculation by major banks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase [12]). Brabeck noted the relationship between his business – food – and major geopolitical issues, stating: “What we call today the Arab Spring... really started as a protest against ever-increasing food prices.” One “solution,” he suggested, was to provide a “market” for water as “the best guidance that you can have.” If water was a ‘market’ product, it wouldn’t be wasted on growing food for fuel, but focus on food for consumption – and preferably (in his view), genetically modified foods. After all, he said, “if the market forces are there the investments are going to be made.” Brabeck suggested that the world could “feed nine billion people,” providing them with water and fuel, but only on the condition that “welet the market do its thing [9].”

Brabeck co-authored a 2011 article for the Wall Street Journal [13]in which he stated that in order to provide “universal access to clean water, there is simply no other choice but to price water at a reasonable rate,” and that roughly 1.8 billion people on earth lack access to clean drinking water “because of poor water management and governance practices, and the lack of political will.” Brabeck’s job then, as chairman of Nestlé, is to help create the “political will” to make water into a modern “market” product.

Now before praising Brabeck for his ‘enlightened’ activism on the issue of water scarcity and providing the world’s poor with access to clean drinking water (which are very real and urgent issues needing attention), Brabeck himself has stressed that his interest in the issue of water has nothing to do with actually addressing these issues in a meaningful way, or for the benefit of the earth and humanity. No, his motivation is much more simple than this.

In a 2010 interview for [14]*, Brabeck noted: “If Nestlé and myself have become very vocal in the area of water, it was not because of any philanthropic idea, it was very simple: by analyzing... what is the single most important factor for the sustainability of Nestlé, water came as [the] number one subject.” This is what led Brabeck and Nestlé into the issue of water “sustainability,” he explained. “I think this is part of a company’s responsibility,” and added: “Now, if I was in a different industry, I would have a different subject, certainly, that I would be focusing on.”

Brabeck was asked if industries should “have a role in finding solutions to environmental issues that affect their business,” to which he replied: “Yes, because it is in the interest of our shareholders... If I want to convince my shareholders that this industry is a long-term sustainable industry, I have to ensure that all aspects that are vital for this company are sustainable... When I see, like in our case, that one of the aspects – which is water, which is needed in order to produce the raw materials for our company – if this is not sustainable, then my enterprise is not sustainable. So therefore [14]. So shareholder interest and societal interest are common.”

Thus, when Brabeck and Nestlé promote “water sustainability,” what they are really promoting is the sustainability of Nestlé’s access to and control over water resources. How is that best achieved? Well, since Nestlé is a large multinational corporation, the natural solution is to promote ‘market’ control of water, which means privatization and monopolization of the world’s water supply into a few corporate hands.

In a 2011 conversation with the editor of Time Magazine at the Council on Foreign Relations [15], Brabeck referred to a recent World Economic Forum meeting where the issue of “corporate social responsibility” was the main subject of discussion, when corporate executives “started to talk about [how] we have to give back to society,” Brabeck spoke up and stated: “I don’t feel that we have to give back to society, because we have not been stealing from society.” Brabeck explained to the Council on Foreign Relations that he felt such a concept was the purview of philanthropy, and “this was a problem for the CEO of any public company, because I personally believe that no CEO of a public company should be allowed to make philanthropy... I think anybody who does philanthropy should do it with his own money and not the money of the shareholders.” Engaging in corporate social responsibility, Brabeck explained, “was an additional cost.”

At the 2008 World Economic Forum, a consortium of corporations and international organizations formed the 2030 Water Resources Group [16], chaired by Peter Brabeck. It was established in order to “shape the agenda” for the discussion of water resources, and to create “new models for collaboration” between public and private enterprises. The governing council of the 2030 WRG is chaired by Brabeck and includes the executive vice president and CEO of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the investment arm of the World Bank, the administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the chief business officer and managing director of the World Economic Forum, the president of the African Development Bank, the chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, the president of the Asian Development Bank, the director-general of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the president of the Inter-American Development Bank, and the chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, among others.

At the World Water Forum in 2012 – an event largely attended by the global proponents of water privatization, Nestlé among their most enthusiastic supporters – Brabeck suggested that the 2030 Water Resources Group represents a “global public-private initiative [17]” which could help in “providing tools and information on best practice” as well as “guidance and new policy ideas on water resource scarcity.”

Brabeck and Nestlé had been in talks with the Canadian provincial government of Alberta in planning for a potential “water exchange,” to – in the words of Maclean’s magazine – “turn water into money [18].” In 2012, the University of Alberta bestowed an honorary degree upon Peter Brabeck “for his work as a responsible steward for water around the world.” Protests were organized at the university to oppose the ‘honor,’ with a representative from the public interest group, the Council of Canadians, noting: “I’m afraid that the university is positioning themselves on the side of the commodifiers, the people who want to say that water is not a human right that everyone has the right to, but is just a product that can be bought and sold.” A professor at the university stated: “I’m ashamed at this point, about what the university is doing and I’m also very concerned about the way the president of the university has been demonizing people who oppose this.” As another U of A professor stated: “What Nestlé does is take what clean water there is in which poor people are relying on, bottle it and then sell it to wealthier people at an exorbitant profit [19].”

The Global Water Privatization Agenda

Water privatization is an extremely vicious operation, where the quality of – and access to – water resources diminishes or even vanishes, while the costs explode. When it comes to the privatization of water, there is no such thing as “competition” in how the word is generally interpreted: there are only a handful of global corporations that undertake massive water privatizations. The two most prominent are the French-based Suez Environment and Veolia Environment, but also include Thames Water, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, among others. For a world in which food has already been turned into a “market commodity” and has been “financialized,” leading to massive food price increases, hunger riots, and immense profits for a few corporations and banks, the prospect of water privatization is even more disturbing.

The agenda of water privatization is organized at the international level, largely promoted through the World Water Forum and the World Water Council. The World Water Council (WWC) was established in 1996 as a French-based non-profit organization with over 400 members from intergovernmental organizations, government agencies, corporations, corporate-dominated NGOs and environmental organizations, water companies, international organizations and academic institutions.

Every three years, the WWC hosts a World Water Forum, the first of which took place in 1997, and the 6th conference in 2012 was attended by thousands of participants from countries and institutions all over the world get together to decide the future of water, and of course, promote the privatization of this essential resource to human life.

The 6th World Water Forum, hosted in Marseilles, France, was primarily sponsored by the French government and the World Water Council, but included a number of other contributors, including: the African Development Bank, African Union Commission, Arab Water Council, Asian Development Bank, the Council of Europe, the European Commission, the European Investment Bank, the European Parliament, the European Water Association, the Food and Agricultural Organization, the Global Environment Facility, Inter-American Development Bank, Nature Conservancy, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Organization of American States (OAS), Oxfam, the World Bank, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the World Health Organization, the World Wildlife Fund; and a number of corporate sponsors, including: RioTintoAlcan, EDF,Suez Environment, Veolia, and HSBC. Clearly, they have human andenvironmental interests at heart.

The World Bank is a major promoter of water privatization, as much of its aid to ‘developing’ countries was earmarked for water privatization schemes which inevitably benefit major corporations, in co-operation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the U.S. Treasury. One of the first major water privatization schemed funded by the World Bank was in Argentina, for which the Bank “advised” the government of Argentina in 1991 on the bidding and contracting of the water concession, setting a model for what would be promoted around the world. The World Bank’s investment arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), loaned roughly $1 billion to the Argentine government for three water and sewage projects in the country, and even bought a 5% stake in the concession, thus becoming a part owner. When the concession for Buenos Aires was opened up, the French sent representatives from Veolia and Suez, which formed the consortium Aguas Argentinas, and of course, the costs for water services went up. Between 1993, when the contract with the French companies was signed, and 1997, the Aguas Argentinas consortium gained more influence with Argentine President Carlos Menem and his Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo, who would hold meetings with the president of Suez as well as the President of France, Jacques Chirac. By 2002, the water rates (cost of water) in Buenos Aires had increased by 177% [20]since the beginning of the concession.

In the 1990s, the amount of World Bank water privatization projects increased ten-fold, with 31% of World Bank water supply and sanitation projects between 1990 and 2001 including conditions of private-sector involvement, despite the fact that the projects consistently failed [21] in terms of providing cheaper and better water to larger areas. But of course, they were highly profitable for large corporations, so naturally, they continued to be promoted and supported (and subsidized).

One of the most notable examples of water privatization schemes was in Bolivia, the poorest country in South America. In 1998, an IMF loan to Bolivia demanded conditions of “structural reform,” the selling off of “all remaining public enterprises,” including water. In 1999, the World Bank told the Bolivian government to end its subsidies for water services, and that same year, the government leased the Cochabamba Water System to a consortium of multinational corporations, Aguas del Tunari, which included the American corporation Bechtel. After granting the consortium a 40-year lease, the government passed a law which would make residents pay the full cost of water services. In January of 2000, protests in Cochabamba shut down the city for four days, striking and establishing roadblocks, mobilizing against the water price increases which doubled or tripled their water bills. Protests continued in February, met with riot police and tear gas, injuring 175 people [22].

By April, the protests began to spread to other Bolivian cities and rural communities, and during a “state of siege” (essentially martial law) declared by Bolivian president Hugo Banzer, a 17-year old boy, Victor Hugo Daza, was shot and killed by a Bolivian Army captain, who was trained as the U.S. military academy, the School of the Americas. As riot police continued to meet protesters with tear gas and live ammunition, more people were killed, and dozens more injured. On April 10 [22], the government conceded to the people, ending the contract with the corporate consortium and granting the people to control their water system through a grassroots coalition led by the protest organizers.

Two days later, World Bank President James Wolfensohn stated that the people of Bolivia should pay for their water services. On August 6, 2001, the president of Bolivia resigned, and the Vice President Jorge Quiroga, a former IBM executive, was sworn in as the new president to serve the remainder of the term until August of 2002. Meanwhile, the water consortium, deeply offended at the prospect of people taking control of their own resources, attempted to take legal action against the government of Bolivia for violating the contract. Bechtel was seeking $25 million [22] in compensation for its “losses,” while recording a yearly profit of $14 billion, whereas the national budget of Bolivia was a mere $2.7 billion. The situation ultimately led to a type of social revolution which brought to power the first indigenous Bolivian leader in the country’s history, Evo Morales.

This, of course, has not stopped the World Bank and IMF – and the imperial governments which finance them – from promoting water privatization around the world for the exclusive benefit of a handful of multinational corporations. The World Bank promotes water privatization across Africa in order to “ease the continent’s water crisis [23],” by making water more expensive and less accessible.

As the communications director of the World Bank in 2003, Paul Mitchell, explained, “Water is crucial to life – we have to get water to poor people,” adding: “There are a lot of myths about privatization.” I would agree. Though the myth that it ‘works’ is what I would propose, but Mitchell instead suggested that, “[p]rivate sector participation is simply to manage the asset to make it function for the people in the country.” Except that it doesn’t. But don’t worry, decreasing water standards, dismantling water distribution, and rapidly increasing the costs of water to the poorest regions on earth is good, according to Mitchell and the World Bank. He told the BBC that what the World Bank is most interested in is the “best way to get water to poor people [23].” Perhaps he misspoke and meant to say, “the best way to take water from poor people,” because that’s what actually happens.

In 2003, the World Bank funded a water privatization scheme in the country of Tanzania, supported by the British government, and granting the concession to a consortium called City Water, owned by the British company Biwater, which worked with a German engineering firm, Gauff, to provide water to the city of Dar es Salaam and the surrounding region. It was one of the most ambitious water privatization schemes in Africa, with $140 million in World Bank funding, and, wrote John Vidal in the Guardian [24], it “was intended to be a model for how the world’s poorest communities could be lifted out of poverty.”

The agreement included conditions for the consortium to install new pipelines for water distribution. The British government’s Department for International Development gave a 440,000-pound contract to the British neoliberal think tank, Adam Smith International, “to do public-relations work for the project.” Tanzania’s best-known gospel singer was hired to perform a pop song about the benefits of privatization, mentioning electricity, telephones, the ports, railways, and of course, water. Both the IMF and World Bank made the water scheme a condition for “aid” they gave to the country. Less than one year into the ten-year contract, the private consortium, City Water, stopped paying its monthly fee for leasing the government’s pipes and infrastructure provided by the public water company, Dawasa, while simultaneously insisting that its own fees be raised. An unpublished World Bank report even noted: “The primary assumption on the part of almost all involved, particularly on the donor side, was that it would be very hard, if not impossible, for the private operator [City Water] to perform worse than Dawasa. But that is what happened.” The World Bank as a whole, however, endorsed the program as “highly satisfactory [25],” and rightly so, because it was doing what it was intended to do: provide profits for private corporations at the expense of poor people.

By 2005, the company had not built any new pipes, it had not spent the meager investments it promised, and the water quality declined. As British government “aid” money was poured into privatization propaganda, a video was produced which included the phrase: “Our old industries are dry like crops and privatization brings the rain [24].” Actually, privatization attaches a price-tag to rain. Thus, in 2005, the government of Tanzania ended the contract with City Water, and arrested the three company executives, deporting them back to Britain. As is typical, the British company, Biwater, then began to file a lawsuit against the Tanzanian government for breach of contract, wanting to collect $20-25 million. A press release from Biwater at the time wrote: “We have been left with no choice [25]... If a signal goes out that governments are free to expropriate foreign investments with impunity,” investors would flee, and this would, of course, “deal a massive blow to the development goals of Tanzania and other countries in Africa.”

The sixth World Water Forum in Marseilles in 2012 brought together some 19,000 participants, where the French Development Minister Henri de Raincourt proposed a “global water and environment management scheme,” adding: “The French government is not alone in its conviction that a global environment agency is needed more than ever.” A parallel conference was held – the Alternative World Water Forum – which featured critics of water privatization. Gustave Massiah, a representative of the anti-globalization group Attac, stated, “Should a global water fund be in control, giving concessions to multinational companies, then that’s not a solution for us. On the contrary, that would only add to the problems [26] of the current system.”

Another member of Attac, Jacques Cambon, used to be the head of SAFEGE’s Africa branch, a subsidiary of the water conglomerate Suez. Cambon was critical of the idea of a global water fund, warning against centralization, and further explained that the World Bank “has almost always financed large-scale projects that were not in tune with local conditions.” Maria Theresa Lauron, a Philippine activist, shared the story of water privatization in the Philippines, saying, “Since 1997, prices went up by 450 to 800 percent... At the same time, the water quality has gone down. Many people get ill because of bad water; a year ago some 600 people died as a result of bacteria in the water because the private company didn’t do proper water checks [27].” But then, why would the company do such a thing? It’s not like it’s particularly profitable to be concerned with human welfare.

In Europe, the European Commission had been pushing water privatization as a condition for development funds between 2002 and 2010, specifically in several central and eastern European countries which were dependent upon EU grants. Since the European debt crisis, the European Commission had made water privatization a condition [28] for Greece, Portugal, and Italy. Greece is privatizing its water companies, Portugal is being pressured to sell its national water company, Aguas do Portugal, and in Italy, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Commission were pushing water privatization, even though a national referendum in July of 2011 saw the people of Italy reject such a scheme by 95%.

In this context, among the global institutions and corporations of power and influence, it is perhaps less surprising to imagine the chairman of Nestlé suggesting that human beings having a “right” to water is rather “extreme.” And for a very simple reason: that’s not profitable for Nestlé, even though it might be good for humanity and the earth. It’s about priorities, and in our world, priorities are set by multinational corporations, banks, and global oligarchs. As Nestlé would have us think, corporate and social interests are not opposed, as corporations – through their ‘enlightened’ self-interest and profit-seeking motives – will almost accidentally make the world a better place. Now, while neoliberal orthodoxy functions on the basis of people simply accepting this premise without investigation (like any religious belief), perhaps it would be worth looking at Nestlé as an example for corporate benefaction for the world and humanity.

Nestlé's Corporate Social Responsibility: Making the World Safe for Nestlé... and Incidentally Destroying the World

As a major multinational corporation, Nestlé has a proven track record of exploiting labour, destroying the environment, engaging in human rights violations, but of course – and most importantly – it makes big profits. In 2012, Nestlé was taking in major profits from ‘emerging markets [29]’ in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. However, some emerging market profits began to slow down [30] in 2013. This was partly the result ofa horsemeat scandal [31] which required companies like Nestlé to intensify the screening of their food products.

Less than a year prior, Nestlé was complaining that “over-regulation [32]” of the food industry was “undermining individual responsibility,” which is another way of saying that responsibility for products and their safety should be passed from the producer to the consumer. In other words, if you’re stupid enough to buy Nestlé products, it’s your fault if you get diabetes or eat horsemeat, and therefore, it’s your responsibility, not the responsibility of Nestlé. Fair enough! We’re stupid enough to accept corporations ruling over us, therefore, what right do we have to complain about all the horrendous crimes and destruction they cause? A cynic could perhaps argue such a point.

One of Nestlé’s most famous PR problems was that of marketing artificial baby milk, which sprung to headlines in the 1970s following the publication of “The Baby Killer,” accusing the company of getting Third World mothers hooked on formula. As research was proving that breastfeeding was healthier, Nestlé marketed its baby formula as a way for women to ‘Westernize’ and join the modern world, handing out pamphlets and promotional samples, with companies hiring “sales girls in nurses’ uniforms (sometimes qualified, sometimes not)” in order to drop by homes and sell formula. Women tried to save money on the formula by diluting it, often times with contaminated water. As the London-based organization War on Want noted: “The results can be seen in the clinics and hospitals, the slums and graveyards of the Third World... Children whose bodies have wasted away until all that is left is a big head on top of the shriveled body of an old man.” An official with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) blamed baby formula for “a million infant deaths every year [33] through malnutrition and diarrheal diseases.”

Mike Muller, the author of “The Baby Killer” back in 1974, wrote an article for the Guardian in 2013 in which he mentioned that he gave Peter Brabeck a “present” at the World Economic Forum, a signed copy [34]of the report. The report had sparked a global boycott of Nestlé and the company responded with lawsuits.

Nestlé has also been implicated for its support of palm-oil plantations, which have led to increased deforestation and the destruction of orangutan habitats in Indonesia. A Greenpeace publication noted that, “at least 1500 orangutans died [35] in 2006 as a result of deliberate attacks by plantation workers and loss of habitat due to the expansion of oil palm plantations.” A social media campaign [36] was launched against Nestlé for its role in supporting palm oil plantations, deforestation, and the destruction of orangutan habitats and lives. The campaign pressured Nestlé to decrease its “deforestation footprint [37].”

As Nestlé has been expanding its presence in Africa [38], it has also aroused more controversy in its operations on the continent. Nestlé purchases one-tenth of the world’s cocoa, most of which comes from the Ivory Coast, where the company has been implicated in the use of child labour. In 2001, U.S. legislation required companies to engage in “self-regulation” which called for “slave free” labeling on all cocoa products. This “self regulation,” however, “failed to deliver” – imagine that! – as one study carried out by Tulane University with funding from the U.S. government revealed that roughly 2 million children [39] were working on cocoa-related activities in both Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Even an internal audit carried out by the company found that Nestlé was guilty of “numerous [40]” violations of child labour laws. Nestlé’s head of operations stated, “The use of child labor in our cocoa supply goes against everything we stand for.” So naturally, they will continue to use child labour.

Peter Brabeck stated that it’s “nearly impossible” to end the practice, and he compared the practice to that of farming in Switzerland: “You go to Switzerland... still today, in the month of September, schools have one week holiday so students can help in the wine harvesting... In those developing countries, this also happens,” he told the Council on Foreign Relations. While acknowledging that this “is basically child labor and slave labor in some African markets,” it is “a challenge which is not very easy to tackle,” noting that there is “a very fine edge” of what is acceptable regarding “child labor in [the] agricultural environment.” He added: “It’s almost natural [15].” Thus, Brabeck explained, “you have to look at it differently,” and that it was not the job of Nestlé to tell parents that their children can’t work on cocoa plantations/farms, “which is ridiculous,” he suggested: “But what we are saying is we will help you that your child has access for schooling.” So clearly there is no problem with using child slavery, just so long as the children get some schooling... presumably, in their ‘off-hours’ from slavery. Problem solved!

While Brabeck and Nestlé have made a big issue of water scarcity, which again, is an incredibly important issue, their solutions revolve around “pricing” water at a market value, and thus encouraging privatization. Indeed, a global water grab has been a defining feature of the past several years (coupled with a great global land grab), in which investors, countries, banks and corporations have been buying up vast tracts of land (primarily in sub-Saharan Africa) for virtually nothing, pushing off the populations which live off the land, taking all the resources, water, and clearing the land of towns and villages, to convert them into industrial agricultural plantations to develop food and other crops for export, while domestic populations are pushed deeper into poverty, hunger, and are deprived of access to water. Peter Brabeck has referred to the land grabs as really being about water: “For with the land comes the right to withdraw the water linked to it, in most countries essentially a freebie that increasingly could be seen as the most valuable part of the deal.” This, noted Brabeck, is “the great water grab [41].”

And of course, Nestlé would know something about water grabs, as it has become very good at implementing them. In past years, the company has been increasingly buying land where it is taking the fresh water resources, bottling them in plastic bottles and selling them to the public at exorbitant prices. In 2008, as Nestlé was planning to build a bottling water plant in McCloud, California, the Attorney General opposed the plan, noting: “It takes massive quantities of oil [42] to produce plastic water bottles and to ship them in diesel trucks across the United States... Nestlé will face swift legal challenge if it does not fully evaluate the environmental impact of diverting millions of gallons of spring water from the McCloud River into billions of plastic water bottles.” Nestlé already operated roughly 50 springs across the country, and was acquiring more, such as a plan to draw roughly 65 million gallons [43] of water from a spring in Colorado, despite fierce opposition [44] to the deal.

Years of opposition to the plans of Nestlé in McCloud finally resulted in the company giving up on its efforts there. However, the company quickly moved on to finding new locations to take water and make a profit while destroying the environment (just an added bonus, of course). The corporation controls one-third of the U.S. market in bottled water, selling it as 70 different brand names, including Perrier, Arrowhead, Deer Park and Poland Spring. The two other large bottled water companies are Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, though Nestlé had earned a reputation “in targeting rural communities [45] for spring water, a move that has earned it fierce opposition across the U.S. from towns worried about losing their precious water resources.” And water grabs by Nestlé as well as opposition continue to engulf towns and states and cities across the country, with one more recent case in Oregon [46].

Nestlé has aroused controversy [47] for its relations with labour, exploiting farmers, pollution, and human rights violations, among many other things [48]. Nestlé has been implicated in the kidnapping and murder of a union activist and employee of the company’s subsidiary in Colombia, with a judge demanding the prosecutor to “investigate leading managers of Nestle-Cicolac to clarify their likely involvement [49] and/or planning of the murder of union leader Luciano Enrique Romero Molina.” In 2012, a Colombian trade union and a human rights group filed charges against Nestlé [50] for negligence over the murder of their former employee Romero.

More recently, Nestlé has been found liable over spying on NGOs, with the company hiring a private security company to infiltrate an anti-globalization group, and while a judge ordered the company to pay compensation, a Nestlé spokesperson stated that, “incitement to infiltration is against Nestlé’s corporate business principles.” Just like child slavery, presumably. But not to worry, the spokesman said, “we will take appropriate action [51].”

Peter Brabeck, who it should be noted, also sits on the boards of Exxon, L’Oréal, and the banking giant Credit Suisse, warned in 2009 that the global economic crisis would be “very deep” and that, “this crisis will go on for a long period.” On top of that, the food crisis would be “getting worse” over time, hitting poor people the hardest. However, propping up the financial sector through massive bailouts was, in his view,“absolutely essential.” [52] But not to worry, as banks are bailed out by governments, who hand the bill to the population, which pays for the crisis through reduced standards of living and exploitation (which we call “austerity” and “structural reform” measures), Nestlé has been ableto adapt to a new market [53] of impoverished people, selling cheaper products to more people who now have less money. And better yet, it’s been making massive profits [54]. And remember, according to Brabeck, isn’t that all that really matters?

This is the world according to corporations. Unfortunately, while it creates enormous wealth, it is also leading to the inevitable extinction of our species, and possibly all life on earth. But that’s not a concern of corporations, so it doesn’t concern those who run corporations, who make the important decisions, and pressure and purchase our politicians.

I wonder... what would the world be like if people were able to make decisions?

There’s only one way to know.

See more stories tagged with:

water [55],

privatized water [56]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/environment/human-beings-have-no-right-water-and-other-words-wisdom-your-friendly-neighborhood

Links:

[1] http://andrewgavinmarshall.com

[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/andrew-gavin-marshall

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyAzxmN2s0w

[4] http://www.nestle.com/aboutus/management/boardofdirectors/peterbrabeckletmathe

[5] http://www.roche.com/about_roche/management/ec_bod_former/board_of_directors-brabeck.htm

[6] http://www.weforum.org/content/leadership-team

[7] http://www.ert.eu/members

[8] http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/participants_2011.html

[9] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904787404576529912073080124.html

[10] http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/04/15/the_next_big_thing_h20

[11] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/jun/24/water-shortage-pricing-south-africa

[12] http://andrewgavinmarshall.com/2013/01/29/the-financialization-of-food-and-the-profitability-of-poverty/

[13] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576200873809416708.html

[14] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRSqRfv4T7U

[15] http://www.cfr.org/business-and-foreign-policy/conversation-peter-brabeck-letmathe/p24466

[16] http://www.2030wrg.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/2030-WRG-Annual-Report1.pdf

[17] http://www.blueplanetproject.net/index.php/news-nestle-chairman-promotes-global-public-private-policy-body-at-the-world-water-forum/

[18] http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/07/07/turning-water-into-money/

[19] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/story/2012/03/01/edmonton-protesters-.html

[20] http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/deadinthewater/argentina.html

[21] http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/deadinthewater/bank.html

[22] http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bolivia/timeline.html

[23] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3148837.stm

[24] http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/may/25/uk.world

[25] http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/aug/16/imf.internationalaidanddevelopment

[26] http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,15815322,00.html

[27] http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,15815322,00.html%20/

[28] http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/1952/eus-water-privatisation-plans-irresponsible

[29] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5ef66f40-e1e5-11e1-8e9d-00144feab49a.html#axzz2R4i2OiCC

[30] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f751311e-a7ef-11e2-b031-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2R4i2OiCC

[31] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/8e26d2fe-766a-11e2-ac91-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2R4i2OiCC

[32] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/0e5c4daa-bc7b-11e1-a470-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2R4i2OiCC

[33] http://www.businessinsider.com/nestles-infant-formula-scandal-2012-6?op=1

[34] http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/nestle-baby-milk-scandal-food-industry-standards

[35] http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/443698/nestl_under_fire_for_destroying_orangutan_habitat.html

[36] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304434404575149883850508158.html

[37] http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/online-protest-drives-nestl-to-environmentally-friendly-palm-oil-1976443.html

[38] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203537304577028422773102732.html

[39] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/fa3a5f32-19e7-11e1-b9d7-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2R4i2OiCC

[40] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-29/nestle-must-address-child-labor-in-cocoa-supply-fla-says.html

[41] http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=270

[42] http://www.alternet.org/story/93505/attorney_general_slams_nestle%27s_bottled_water_aspirations

[43] http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2009/08/nestle-wins-approval-to-tap-colorado-ground-water-.html

[44] http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_11974140

[45] http://www.alternet.org/story/146116/are_greedy_water_bottlers_stealing_your_city%27s_drinking_water

[46] http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/blogs/oregon-at-the-forefront-of-battle-against-nestle-water-grab/

[47] http://www.corp-research.org/nestle

[48] http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=240#union

[49] http://www.dw.de/nestle-under-fire-over-colombian-murder/a-16195009

[50] http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/Complaint_against_Nestle_over_Colombian_death_.html?cid=32242446

[51] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d84a3b94-6af0-11e2-9871-00144feab49a.html#axzz2R4i2OiCC

[52] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c398c08e-1de8-11de-830b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2R4i2OiCC

[53] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/16/budget-brands-cheaper-food-europe

[54] http://globalnews.ca/news/392682/swiss-food-giant-nestle-reports-full-year-11-55-billion-net-profit-predicts-challenging-2013/

[55] http://www.alternet.org/tags/water-0

[56] http://www.alternet.org/tags/privatized-water

[57] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

Watershed moment

by Christina Ammon

McCloud, Calif.

It’s already late morning, but the wide streets are empty. Patty Ballard pulls her ’88 Chevy van into the parking lot of the Shasta Sunset Dinner Train, where she lugs bus tubs for a scant living. Back in the days when McCloud was a booming timber town, the train was laden with logs. Now it’s a mainstay of the local tourism economy, winding diners around the flanks of Northern California’s imposing Mount Shasta.

When the ailing timber industry toppled in 2002, McCloud turned to tourism. But the economic statistics remain as bleak as an empty sawmill: Since the 1960s timber heyday, the town’s population has dropped by half. Per capita income is less than $16,000. Last year, the graduating class at McCloud High School totaled one. Despite the hopeful sheen of espresso shops and bed and breakfasts, McCloud sometimes feels like an emptied-out museum. But things could be different.

In September 2003, the unincorporated town’s governing body — the McCloud Community Service District — signed a contract with Nestlé Corp. allowing it to build a million-square-foot plant and bottle up to a half-billion gallons of local spring water per year for its Arrowhead brand. The plant, which would sit on the old mill site, would employ 240 people, and Nestlé’s fees and payments of $300,000 per year would increase the town’s operating budget by one-third.

In a place where water is so abundant that residents hose their driveways in winter to melt snow and ice, cashing in on what was going to waste seemed like getting something for nothing. Ballard was enthusiastic: “I’ll be first in line for a job,” she said.

But four years later, Ballard still works on the dinner train, and the bottling plant remains no more than a blueprint. Soon after the contract was signed, a group of local citizens questioned the plant’s potential effects on their community — its water supply, its quiet character and its world-class fishing streams. And they were outraged at the terms of the contract, which bound them for the next 100 years. The group won a lawsuit in Siskiyou County Court, and the contract was nullified because it was signed prior to the completion of an environmental review and therefore violated the California Environmental Quality Act. But Nestlé appealed, and won. In May, the California Supreme Court refused to hear the case. But the controversy refuses to die. Now the opponents are attacking the proposal from other fronts. And this little town in Northern California, still traumatized by the timber squabbles of the past, has become the opening battleground in a West-wide war over bottled water.

Americans drink more than 8 billion gallons of bottled water every year, spending more than $11 billion annually on Dasani, Aquafina, Evian and other brands. With a growth rate of 10 percent per year, bottled water is the fastest-growing segment of the beverage industry, surpassing milk and likely to outpace soda in the near future. Bottling plants are popping up everywhere, many in rural areas that boast of pristine spring water.

Though often heralded as a clean industry, water bottlers have not been welcomed in some communities. In Mecosta, Mich., citizens won a lawsuit against Nestlé after proving its operations harmed nearby streams and wetlands. Similar battles have erupted in Florida, Texas and Maine. Activists routinely attack the industry as a whole because of its contribution to landfill overflow and because it commercializes what many see as an essential human right. Still, the fight has been slow to ignite in the West, where communities, often reeling from the loss of one extractive industry or another, have generally welcomed the economic promise of bottlers with wide-open arms.

California is now home to more water-bottling facilities than any other state in the nation. Some suck water directly out of springs; others filter the municipal water supply. Nestlé alone has plants scattered from Calistoga, in Napa County, to the Morongo Indian Reservation on the fringes of Los Angeles. In the northern part of the state, Crystal Geyser, Mt. Shasta Spring Water and Dannon are already in operation.

So, when Nestlé’s natural resource manager Dave Palais first arrived in McCloud four years ago, the stage seemed set. His affable nature and casual dress went over well with locals. But when the five-member district board unanimously signed the contract without public review, the love affair abruptly ended. The town was split down the middle like firewood.

Though bottling was nothing new to Northern California, a confluence of factors had merged in McCloud to galvanize opposition to the Arrowhead plant. In addition to the sheer size of the facility and length of the contract, McCloud is the gateway to Mount Shasta and to celebrated fishing streams, making it a charismatic destination for tourists along the I-5 corridor. Over time, many of its blue-collar residents have been replaced by urbanites attracted to the scenery and the prospect of a quieter and cleaner life. Janet Connaughton, who moved here from Marin, fits that profile. She’s in shock over the contract.

:{:{

“How did two loggers, two housewives, and a retired insurance salesman get to sell water that belongs to us all?” Connaughton asks, referring to the service district board. She runs a small bookstore, knits in her spare time, and enjoys the town with its mild-mannered residents who wave to each other in passing. Though her first impulse was to flee to a new town, she resisted, and has instead become the leader of the local opposition.

}:}:

She and her allies are haunted by the thought of a massive facility sitting on the town’s historic mill site, its fluorescent glow intruding on McCloud’s starry nights, and an endless barrage of delivery trucks devastating the mountain silence. Worse, she wonders what the water mining will do to the water table. Nestlé would withdraw 1,600 acre-feet of spring water per year, an amount about equal to the town’s yearly use. Measurements over the past two years indicate that there’s plenty of water to go around — at least 9,000 acre-feet per year flow from the spring. But Steve Bachmann, a local Forest Service hydrologist, says that the unique volcanic hydrology of Mount Shasta, with its lava tubes and springs that can appear and disappear from one year to the next, is poorly understood. No one really knows what effect a severe drought or global warming might have, he says. This uncertainty has drawn California Trout and Trout Unlimited into the fray; the springs feed an important tributary to the McCloud River, a renowned fishing stream and the mainstay of the local tourism economy.

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Though the contract requires that Nestlé be treated like any other member of the water district, paying the same rate and subject to the same cutbacks in times of drought, the terms are unsettling. Nestlé can draw up to 1,800,000 gallons of water every day at a cost of just 8 cents for 1,000 gallons. That’s 8 cents for enough water to fill 3,780 Arrowhead 1-liter bottles, each of which can sell for $1.50 or more down at the local convenience store. It’s potentially a huge profit margin, though Palais won’t release an exact figure; it’s protected, he says, “like the Coke formula.” And, for the next 100 years, as the value of water inevitably rises, McCloud will have no chance to look for a better deal: Nestlé’s contract forbids the town from selling water to any potential competitors.

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For environmental groups campaigning against bottled water, McCloud makes the perfect poster child. Poised at the headwaters of the Sacramento River, the area sits at a critical juncture for California’s water supply. “Mount Shasta is a symbol of Northern California,” says Ruth Caplan, organizer of the Sierra Club’s Water Privatization Task Force, which fights corporate control of water. The organization uses McCloud as a cautionary tale: Communities should take a closer look at water bottling, activists say, and pass ordinances preventing the bulk export of surface and groundwater. “This is just the beginning,” says Caplan. For her, the war is not over until all communities are granted democratic control of their water.

Still at work on the dinner train, Patty Ballard is worried more about paying the rent for her subsidized apartment and raising her son than about drying wetlands and global warming. “It’s like worrying about Armageddon. I don’t want to think about it. You’ve got all this stuff going through your brain. Is there going to be a big flood? Is the volcano going to blow?” She characterizes the plant’s opponents as urban refugees who want McCloud to be a meditative retreat. Her friend, Sheri Burris, agrees: “McCloud wasn’t meant to be quiet.” Burris has deep roots here; her father worked as the head oiler for the mill powerhouse back when McCloud was a timber town. The big wheel that turned the generator sits inert on the lawn behind the town’s timber museum.

The two friends have formed the McCloud Grassroots Committee; they host meetings with Nestlé supporters that fill Burris’ house. They’ll agree that the contract with Nestlé is a bit long. They’ll admit to some fear of big corporations. But the bottled water is just too good an opportunity to pass up. Burris fears that without it, the town she grew up in will die.

But the opposition won’t go away either, despite the recent blow from the state Supreme Court. Opponents have attacked the draft environmental review, which doesn’t address impacts on fish and aquatic life and leaves a number of other questions unanswered. The county is expected to either hand down a final review and decision, or start the review process over this summer. In the meantime, the “antis” plan to keep fighting, here and elsewhere. They see McCloud as a precedent-setting case that could affect watersheds across the West. “There is nowhere to run,” says Connaughton. “This battle is going to be everywhere.”

The author writes from Ashland, Oregon, where citizens just rejected a city charter revision that contained loopholes allowing for the sale of water for bottling from Ashland Creek.

This article was made possible with support from the William C. Kenney Watershed Protection Foundation and the Jay Kenney Foundation.

from High Country News

cyber ch:

1980 Nestle infant formula boycott by 700 groups; Coordination Center for Nutrition shared office space with The Tobacco Institute, (divide and conquer eg recruit smaller teacher union, peel off the United methodists.

...Infant Formula Audit Commission chaired by Edmund Muskie, a former U.S. senator and U.S. secretary of state under President Jimmy Carter, funded it and so called all the shots. imitated by energy in depth shale [// psy-ops?]

Stratfor Evolved/spawned/mutated from Pagan International; Rafael Pagan was Col in Viet Nam War, briefed a succession of presidents. In 1970 started business consulting for Dole (Honduras, cf UFC 1944 coup) and Nestle;

Nestle wanted to expand its infant formula market into the Third World (why?); to do so, it needed to convince mothers that their free natural milk was inferior to their modern product, so dress locals saleswomen up as nurses; several probles: once mothers stop nursing, their milk stops; when they cannot afford the formula, they often dilute it (less nutrition), often with contaminated water. Outrage wen exposed *(by? how) led to internatuional bad press ad boycott; To counter the boycott, MBD created bogus Nestle Coordination Center for Nutrition (which shared office space with the Tobacco Institute). It was co-run by Pagan and Jack Mongoven. Mongoven had been a reporter, then spokesman for HEW and RNC. Churches were key in worldwide boycott, but Pagan rolled / peeled off the United Methodists, then [To make amends, Nestle worked with the Infant Formula Audit Commission to ensure its global marketing practices were in line with World Health Organization rules. It was chaired by Edmund Muskie, a former U.S. senator and U.S. secretary of state under President Jimmy Carter.

The problem: Nestle created the commission, funded it and called all the shots. Few equipped with this knowledge were surprised when the commission concluded “the company has not been improperly ‘dumping’ baby formula on Third World hospitals,” as explained in The Los Angeles Times.”...For his successful efforts running what he would later describe as “a responsive, accurate corporate issue and trends warning system [with] analysis capability,” Pagan received the Public Relations Society of America’s prestigious Silver Anvil Award.[bruce harrison?] Other industries have followed similar strategies, such as the shale gas industry’s “Energy in Depth” and corporate education reform’s “Stand for Children.”

Pagan International is born

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