Nestlé Denies that Water is a Fundamental Human Right & Accused Of Exploiting Water Supplies

The current Chairman and former CEO of Nestlé, the largest producer of food products in the world, believes that the answer to global water issues is privatization. This statement is on record from the wonderful company that has peddled junk food in the Amazon, has invested money to thwart the labeling of GMO-filled products, has a disturbing health and ethics record for its infant formula, and has deployed a cyber army to monitor Internet criticism and shape discussions in social media.

In the small Pakistani community of Bhati Dilwan, a former village councilor says children are being sickened by filthy water. Who's to blame? He says it's bottled water-maker Nestlé, which dug a deep well that is depriving locals of potable water. “The water is not only very dirty, but the water level sank from 100 to 300 to 400 feet,” Dilwan says.

This is apparently the company we should trust to manage our water, despite the record of large bottling companies like Nestlé having a track record of creating shortages.

Large multinational beverage companies are usually given water-well privileges (and even tax breaks) over citizens because they create jobs, which is apparently more important to the local governments than water rights to other taxpaying citizens. These companies such as Coca Cola and Nestlé (which bottles suburban Michigan well-water and calls it Poland Spring) suck up millions of gallons of water, leaving the public to suffer with any shortages.

The testimony that was made of a former village councilor of Bhati Dilwan is a key moment in the new documentary film “Bottled Life” by Swiss filmmaker Urs Schnell and journalist Res Gehriger. The village councilor interviewed in the film says Nestlé refused the village’s request for clean water to be piped in.

The notoriously bad drinking water in Pakistan and elsewhere is the reason for the success of the Pure Life brand. A good 10 years ago, the Swiss food company began adding minerals to ground water and bottling it. Today, Pure Life Purified Water Enhanced With Minerals is the largest water brand in the world – “a jewel in our portfolio,” according to John Harris, head of Nestlé Waters.

But Chairman, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, believes that “access to water is not a public right.” Nor is it a human right. So if privatization is the answer, is this the company in which the public should place its trust?

Here is just one example, among many, of his company’s concern for the public thus far:

In view of the fact that every day more children die from drinking dirty water than AIDS, war, traffic accidents and malaria put together, Maude Barlow, a former UN chief adviser for water issues, states: “When a company like Nestlé comes along and says, Pure Life is the answer, we’re selling you your own ground water while nothing comes out of your faucets anymore or if it does it’s undrinkable – that’s more than irresponsible, that’s practically a criminal act.”

In response to questions put to it by Tages Anzeiger, Nestlé communicated in writing that it had built two water filtering facilities that were providing over 10,000 people in Pakistan’s Sheikhupura with clean drinking water. Construction of a further facility was planned for 2012. The company said they had also built two schools in Sheikhupura.

Nestlé is not the only company to create a huge business with big profit potential by bottling ground water -- Danone and Coca-Cola do it too. However, the way Nestlé goes about it, as depicted in the film, is in stark contrast to the image the company seeks to project. Nestlé likes to see itself as a global problem solver out not only for profits but to “create shared values.” In 2007, when Schnell and Gehriger began working on the movie, then Nestlé spokesman François-Xavier Perroud called it "the wrong film at the wrong time." Several times between 2007 and 2009 the company denined requests for interviews with company managers. It also refused to allow visits to bottling facilities.

The company’s present spokesperson, Melanie Kohli, told the Tages Anzeiger that Nestlé had reached the conclusion that the project would reflect a one-sided and unfair view of company activity and those who worked for Nestlé. “Consequently, we declined to work with the filmmakers. Our carefully considered decision was the right one at the time.”

racking the company's record, from Ethiopia to Nigeria

Undeterred, journalist Gehriger visited a refugee camp in Ethiopia where, in 2003, Nestlé had installed a water treatment facility for $750,000. Two years later, the company pulled out. Since then the facility has not been functioning properly, and water shortages have returned.

In Lagos, Nigeria, Gehriger discovered that families have to spend up to half their household budget on water in canisters, and that only those who can afford it drink Pure Life. Then there are the communities in the U.S. state of Maine who are fighting Nestlé because it pumps ground water and spring water in huge quantities – which it can do legally: whoever owns land can pump as much water as they like.

Nestlé pumps several million cubic meters annually and transports the water in tanker trucks to bottling plants. “They’re using our water to make profits, a liter doesn't even cost them a cent,” one woman complains. “They’re selling the water we use to flush toilets and wash our hands as expensive spring water,” says another. But since Nestlé brings the communities tax dollars, officials welcome the company, which is supported by an armada of lawyers and PR people.

Why? Because if the community had fresh water piped in, it would deprive Nestlé of its lucrative market in water bottled under the Pure Life brand.

Source:

worldcrunch.com

www.globalresearch.ca

http://worldtruth.tv

Nestlé is Trying to Patent the Fennel Flower

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Nigella sativa — more commonly known as fennel flower — has been used as a cure-all remedy for over a thousand years. It treats everything from vomiting to fevers to skin diseases, and has been widely available in impoverished communities across the Middle East and Asia.

Swiss food company Nestle is seeking a patent on the use of the seed (botanical name) Nigella sativa to prevent food allergies, claiming the plant seed and extract when they are used as a food ingredient or drug.

After the patent fight over turmeric and basmati, it is black cumin, known as kala jeera or kalaunji, and widely used in traditional Ayurvedic medicines, that is now the subject of a patent application that may concern India.

Commonly known as habbat al-barakah in Arabic, and frequently called "black seed&", "black cumin&" or "fennel flower&" in English, Nigella sativa is an ancient food and medicinal crop. It is part of the five grains that are collectively called panch phoren and used widely in Bengal cuisine as well as in many Ayurvedic medicines.

The patent application of the Swiss company on the use of the seeds, traditional uses of Nigella sativa is pending in the European patent Office in US, Japan and China since 2009, according to Nestle SA a subsidiary of the company.

In a paper published in 2012, Nestlé scientists claimed to “discover” what much of the world has known for millennia: that Nigella sativa extract could be used for “nutritional interventions in humans with food allergy”.

The company's patent claim is based on a study conducted and published by it in PLOS July 2012, called "Nigella Sativa seed extract alleviates symptoms of allergic diarrhea in mice involving opioid receptors". The authors are from the Nestle Research center in Lausanne Switzerland. It says that the objective of the study on mice was to tackle "food related allergic reactions" which "represent a significant burden for patients and their families and cause considerable health care costs."

 The study finds the black caraway seed extracts effective but does not acknowledge traditional knowledge about them.

 The corporate spokesperson for Nestle SA Philippe Aeschlimann wrote to Business Standard that the patent application was filed in 2009 at the European Patent Office, in the US, Japan and China. ''It claims the use of an opioid receptor stimulating compound for the preparation of a composition to treat or prevent food allergy,'' he said."The compound can be a thymoquinone containing extract, such as an extract from Nigella sativa (black cumin), or from other plants such as Eupatorium ayapana (now Ayapana triplinervis, or water hemp, an American plant from the daisy family), Satureja montana (winter savory, a European plant from the mints family), or the Thymus genus (plants from the mints family, found in Europe, North Africa and Asia)."

Instead of creating an artificial substitute, or fighting to make sure the remedy was widely available, Nestlé is attempting to create a nigella sativa monopoly and gain the ability to sue anyone using it without Nestlé’s permission. Nestlé has filed patent applications — which are currently pending — around the world.

Prior to Nestlé’s outlandish patent claim, researchers in developing nations such as Egypt and Pakistan had already published studies on the same curative powers Nestlé is claiming as its own. And Nestlé has done this before — in 2011, it tried to claim credit for using cow’s milk as a laxative, despite the fact that such knowledge had been in Indian medical texts for a thousand years.

We know Nestlé  doesn't care about ethics. After all, this is the corporation that poisoned its milk with melamine, purchases cocoa from plantations that use child slave labor, and launched a breast milk substitute campaign in the 1970s that contributed to the suffering and deaths of thousands of babies from poor communities.

But we also know that Nestlé is sensitive to public outcry, and that it’s been beaten at the patent game before. If we act fast, we can put enough pressure on Nestlé to get it to drop its patent plans before they harm anyone — but if we want any chance at affecting Nestlé’s decision, we have to speak out now!

The research on Nigella Sativa was not inspired by any kind of traditional knowledge but focused on the compound which is found in this plant and other plants.

 When asked if it did not go against the prevailing knowledge of such used traditionally in India and elsewhere, Nestle    said:

"Nestle recognizes the importance of biodiversity, and respects the sovereign rights of nations over their natural resources, including genetic (biological) resources. We fully support the principle of fair access and benefit-sharing as described in the Convention on Biological Diversity of 1992 and the more recent Nagoya Protocol of 2010."

Tell Nestlé: Stop trying to patent a natural cure

Source:

globalresearch.ca

business-standard.com

http://worldtruth.tv

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