Email update : 8 June 2011

• Boycott widget for blogs and sites
• Watch the Breaking the Rules press conference on line
• Nestlé's brave new BabyNes world
• Sally's Big Bike Ride for Baby Milk Action and breastfeeding support
  

Boycott widget for blogs and sites

Baby Milk Action has created a flash widget for people to add to pages about Nestlé on their blogs and websites. Click here for the simple instructions on how to add it to your pages. You can also add our Nestlé-Free Zone logos to your blog/site side columns to brand your whole site as Nestlé Free.

Nestlé's slogan is 'Good Food, Good Life'. We look at how it puts its own profits before infant health and say, 'Nestlé, Good Grief!'.

The widget plays a boycott jingle as the Nestlé, Good Grief! logo spins into position. A click reveals a menu giving viewers options of what to do next. The widget and Nestlé-Free Zone logos link back to a Baby Milk Action page with updated information and campaign resources.

We need your help more than ever in countering Nestlé's multi-billion dollar public relations and publicity machine - so please do make use of these tools.

We are also looking for people to record their own Nestlé, Good Grief! messages and other boycott slogans for use in the campaign - see the widget page.

Many thanks to everyone who came to the demonstration at Nestlé (UK) HQ last month or took action elsewhere or on the internet. A film clip of Nestlé, Good Grief! - The Musical is under preparation.

Watch the Breaking the Rules press conference on line

Mike Brady from Baby Milk Action joined Annelies Allain from the International Code Documentation Centre at a press conference in Geneva prior to the World Health Assembly last month to present the latest report showing how baby food companies push their products around the world.

The Breaking the Rules, Stretching the Rules 2010monitoring report has examples of violations from 46 countries. There are profiles of 22 leading baby food and bottle and teat companies, with market leaders Nestlé and Danone responsible for many of the violation examples included.

Mike pointed out that in many countries companies can no longer get away with these practices. For example, India and Brazil have introduced strong legislation. The industry complains that it cannot grow its sales in India and in Brazil breastfeeding rates have increased significantly. This shows that companies can comply with the World Health Assembly marketing requirements when they are given no choice - we are not asking them to do something impossible.

Where national measures are lacking or not enforced, companies expand the formula market by undermining breastfeeding. Unfortunately, there is currently no effective system at the international level to stop them - Baby Milk Action has tried using the voluntary systems put in place by the United Nations (the UN Global Compact) and OECD and demonstrated that these are worse than useless.

Which means it falls to us - people around the world - to hold corporations to account.

You are already making a difference: although Nestlé is refusing to change most of the practices in the monitoring report, it has discontinued the leaflet claimings its formula is 'The new "Gold Standard" in infant nutrition' targeted in our 'email Nestlé' campaign after thousands of people sent it emails. More pressure is needed to persuade Nestlé to stop the rest of the violations - click here to email Nestlé again.

Watch the Breaking the Rules presentations at:
http://info.babymilkaction.org/pressrelease/
pressrelease15may11

Nestlé's brave new BabyNes world

Nestlé has been publicising what it calls "The first comprehensive nutrition system for babies" - its BabyNes machine squirts out milk into feeding bottles for new borns. How on earth has the human race survived without there being a way to provide nutrition to its young? In Nestlé's world, the past is prelude and the fact that babies were once nurtured by milk produced by their mothers' bodies is to be consigned to our primitive past it seems. Nestlé, Good Grief!

Aside from using marketing practices that blatantly violate the World Health Assembly marketing requirements, there are safety concerns about Nestlé's machine: it reconstitutes the powder in its expensive capsules at a maximum temperature of 40 deg. C, but powdered formula is not sterile and the World Health Organisation recommends using water at a minimum of 70 deg. C to kill any harmful bacteria in the powder.

For further details on the safety concerns, Nestlé's wider strategy for shaping how corporations are regulated see the blog and what else Baby Milk Action and our partners were doing at the World Health Assembly see the blog: Nestlé's brave new world at:
http://info.babymilkaction.org/news/
campaignblog270511

Sally's big bike ride for Baby Milk Action and breastfeeding support

We are very grateful to Sally Etheridge for offering to raise funds for Baby Milk Action. She is taking place in 150 km bike ride on 25 June - during UK National Breastfeeding Awareness Week - and is seeking sponsors. For full details about the event see:
http://info.babymilkaction.org/sallysbikeride2011

Money raised will be split 50 - 50 between Baby Milk Action and a breastfeeding peer support group local to Sally.

You can contribute to Sally's fundraising via the above link.

If you have a fundraising idea, please let us know how we can help.

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