Nestlé, the biggest food company in the world, has been involved in a significant number of controversies and has been criticized a number of times for its business practices. Since the 1970s, Nestlé has faced criticism for: forced labour modern slavery child labour incidents of contaminated and infested food products deliberately false and misleading claims in marketing of breast milk substitutes, particularly in developing countries preventing access to non-bottled water in impoverished countries issues around animal welfare commitments actively spreading disinformation about recycling illegal water-pumping from drought-stricken Native American reservations price fixing union-busting activity deforestation lobbying to support misinformation about infant and women's nutrition. In 2014, Nestlé alone spent an estimated $160,000 on lobbying related to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.
Baby formula marketing (1970s–present)
Concern about Nestlé's aggressive marketing of their breast milk substitutes, particularly in developing countries, first arose in the 1970s. Critics have accused Nestlé of discouraging mothers from breastfeeding and suggesting that their baby formula is healthier than breastfeeding through marketing campaigns which suggested the formula was used by health professionals. This included Nestlé distributing free formula samples in maternity units and dressing salespeople as nurses to sell customers the false claim that the formula would help with infant health outcomes. This led to a boycott which was launched in 1977 in the United States and subsequently spread into Europe. The boycott was suspended in the US in 1984, after Nestlé agreed to follow an international marketing code endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO), but was relaunched in 1989. As of 2011, the company is included in the FTSE4Good Index designed to help enable ethical investment.
However, the company allegedly repeated these same marketing practices in developing countries like Pakistan in the 1990s. A Pakistani salesman named Syed Aamir Raza Hussain became a whistle-blower against his former employer Nestlé. In 1999, two years after he left Nestlé, Hussain released a report in association with the non-profit organization Baby Milk Action, in which he alleged that Nestlé was encouraging doctors to push its infant formula products over breastfeeding. Nestlé has denied Raza's allegations. This story inspired the acclaimed 2014 Indian film Tigers by the Oscar-winning Bosnian director Danis Tanović.
In May 2011, nineteen Laos-based international NGOs, including Save the Children, Oxfam, CARE International, Plan International, and World Vision launched a boycott of Nestlé with an open letter. Among other unethical practices, they criticized a failure to translate labeling and health information into local languages and accused the company of giving incentives to doctors and nurses to promote the use of infant formula. Nestlé denied the claims and responded by commissioning an audit, carried out by Bureau Veritas, which concluded that "the requirements of the WHO Code and Lao PDR Decree are well embedded throughout the business" but that they were violated by promotional materials "in 4% of the retail outlets visited".
Ernest W. Lefever and the Ethics and Public Policy Center were criticized for accepting a $25,000 contribution from Nestlé while the organization was in the process of developing a report investigating medical care in developing nations which was never published. It was alleged that this contribution affected the release of the report and led to the author of the report submitting an article to Fortune magazine praising the company's position.
Nestlé has been under investigation in China since 2011 over allegations that the company bribed hospital staff to obtain the medical records of patients and push its infant formula to increase sales. This was found to be in violation of a 1995 Chinese regulation that aims to secure the impartiality of medical staff by banning hospitals and academic institutions from promoting instant formula to families. As a consequence, six Nestlé employees were given prison sentences between one and six years.
Forced labor, modern slavery and child labor
Slavery and child labor in the cocoa industry
Multiple reports have documented the widespread use of child labor in cocoa production, as well as slavery and child trafficking, throughout West African plantations, on which Nestlé and other major chocolate companies rely. According to the 2010 documentary, The Dark Side of Chocolate, the children working are typically 12 to 15 years old. The Fair Labor Association has criticized Nestlé for not carrying out proper checks.
In 2005, after the cocoa industry had not met the Harkin–Engel Protocol deadline for certifying that the worst forms of child labor (according to the International Labor Organization's Convention 182) had been eliminated from cocoa production, the International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit in 2005 under the Alien Tort Claims Act against Nestlé and others on behalf of three Malian children. The suit alleged that children were trafficked to Ivory Coast, forced into slavery, and experienced frequent beatings on a cocoa plantation. In September 2010, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California determined corporations cannot be held liable for violations of international law and dismissed the suit. The case was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision. In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Nestlé's appeal of the Ninth Circuit's decision.
A 2016 study published in Fortune magazine concluded that approximately 2.1 million children in several West African countries "still do the dangerous and physically taxing work of harvesting cocoa", noting that "the average farmer in Ghana in the 2013–14 growing season made just 84¢ per day, and farmers in Ivory Coast a mere 50¢ [...] well below the World Bank's new $1.90 per day standard for extreme poverty". On efforts to reduce the issue, former secretary general of the Alliance of Cocoa Producing Countries, Sona Ebai, commented "Best-case scenario, we're only doing 10% of what's needed."
In 2019, Nestlé announced that they could not guarantee that their chocolate products were free from child slave labour, as they could trace only 49% of their purchasing back to the farm level. The Washington Post noted that the commitment taken in 2001 to eradicate such practices within four years had not been kept, neither at the due deadline of 2005, nor within the revised deadlines of 2008 and 2010, and that the result was not likely to be achieved for 2020 either.
In 2021, Nestlé was named in a class action lawsuit filed by eight former child slaves from Mali who alleged that the company aided and abetted their enslavement on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast. The suit accused Nestlé (along with Barry Callebaut, Cargill, Mars Incorporated, Olam International, The Hershey Company, and Mondelez International) of knowingly engaging in forced labor, and the plaintiffs sought damages for unjust enrichment, negligent supervision, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The lawsuit was dismissed in June 2021 by the Supreme Court of the United States on the grounds that all of the conduct alleged in the lawsuit had "occurred in the Ivory Coast," and American laws, specifically the Alien Tort Statute, could not be applied in an extraterritorial way.
Forced labor in Thai fishing industry At the conclusion of a year-long self-imposed investigation in November 2015, Nestlé disclosed that seafood products sourced in Thailand were produced with forced labor. Nestlé is not a major purchaser of seafood in Southeast Asia, but does some business in Thailand – primarily for its Purina cat food. The study found virtually all US and European companies buying seafood from Thailand are exposed to the same risks of abuse in their supply chains. This type of disclosure was a surprise to many in the industry because international companies rarely acknowledge abuses in supply chains.
Nestlé was expected to launch a year-long program in 2016 focused on protecting workers across its supply chain. The company has promised to impose new requirements on all potential suppliers, train boat owners and captains about human rights, and hire auditors to check for compliance with new rules.
Anti-union activities in Colombia Nestlé has been involved in extensive union-busting activity in Colombia since it first arrived there. According to a spokesman for Sinaltrainal, the Colombian Foodworkers Union: "Nestlé converts the factories into camps for the public security forces in order to create terror in the community, destroy the unity of the workers, and misinform the members of the union, with the goal of pitting them against the leaders and destroying the movement."
Food safety Milk products and baby food
In late September 2008, the Hong Kong government found melamine in a Chinese-made Nestlé milk product. Six infants died from kidney damage, and a further 860 babies were hospitalized. The Dairy Farm milk was made by Nestlé's division in the Chinese coastal city Qingdao. Nestlé affirmed that all its products were safe and were not made from milk adulterated with melamine. On 2 October 2008, the Taiwan Health ministry announced that six types of milk powders produced in China by Nestlé contained low-level traces of melamine, and were "removed from the shelves".
As of 2013, Nestlé has implemented initiatives to prevent contamination and utilizes what it calls a "factory and farmers" model that eliminates the middleman. Farmers bring milk directly to a network of Nestlé-owned collection centers, where a computerized system samples, tests, and tags each batch of milk. To reduce further the risk of contamination at the source, the company provides farmers with continuous training and assistance in cow selection, feed quality, storage, and other areas. In 2014, the company opened the Nestlé Food Safety Institute (NFSI) in Beijing that will help meet China's growing demand for healthy and safe food, one of the top three concerns among Chinese consumers. The NFSI announced it would work closely with authorities to help provide a scientific foundation for food-safety policies and standards, with support to include early management of food-safety issues and collaboration with local universities, research institutes and government agencies on food-safety.
In an incident in 2015, weevils and fungus were found in Cerelac cereal, recommended for kids.
In April 2024, an investigation by Public Eye, a Swiss NGO, and the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) revealed that Nestlé's popular baby cereals and formulas sold in lower- and middle-income countries contained significantly higher amounts of added sugar compared to those sold in Europe and other developed nations.
In January 2026, six babies became ill after consuming Nestlé baby food linked to a safety alert over possible cereulide contamination, which can cause vomiting and diarrhea. Nestlé has also received additional illness reports, though a direct link has not been confirmed. French authorities are investigating whether two infant deaths are connected. The company recalled affected products in early January and has since launched a global recall covering more than 60 countries. The recall covered over 800 products from more than 10 Nestlé factories, making it the largest recall in the company’s history. The contamination was reported to link to the Omega-6 (ARA) oil supplied by Cabio Biotech, a Chinese company based in Wuhan.
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