Nestle

So Nestle, not content with trying to claim credit for using cow's milk as a laxative despite the fact that Indian medical texts have been recording that knowledge for a thousand years, is now trying to patent the extract of Nigella Sativa, otherwise know as the fennel flower.  This small plant has been used as a cure all remedy for a thousand years, treating everything from vomiting and fevers to skin diseases among the poorest people of the Middle East and Asia.  It has been widely available where Western produced pills and potions have not.

 

But now Nestlé is claiming to own it, and filing patent claims around the world to try and take control over the natural cure of the fennel flower and turn it into a costly private drug.

In a paper published last year, Nestlé scientists claimed to “discover” what much of the poorest of the third world have known for millennia: that nigella sativa extract could be used for “nutritional interventions in humans with food allergy”.

But 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.

 

So not only is Nestle hijacking other peoples research, it is also trying to do the impossible.  The pharmaceutical companies while not do clinical trials on herbal and natural remedies because they cannot be patented and therefore cannot make the companies money.  So how come Nestle, a chocolate and cereal company, can patent a herbal remedy? This does not make sense until you look at Nestlé's bank budget.  It seems if a business has enough money they can do any thing they please.

 

And among companies Nestle has a long track record of not caring about ethics. After all, this is the corporation that poisoned its milk with melamine, purchases cocoa from plantations that use child slave labour, 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 Nestlé is sensitive to public outcry, and that it's been beaten at the patent game before. The easiest way to put pressure on this company is to go to the website of consumer pressure group SumOfUs and sign their petition.  After that it's time to vote with your feet.  If a packet has the name Nestle on it, don't buy the product.  It is seriously annoying when you realise your favourite cereal, Cheerio, are a Nestle product (I'm speaking from experience here) but the only way we can hurt the Big Guys is if we kick them where it hurts - their wallets.  If the big corporations realise that every time they try to put profit before human rights and health their consumers are going to stop buying from them and their shareholders are going to get bad quarterly statements, then they will have to stop doing these violations.

 

The Big Companies may look big and scary but they rely on consumers to buy their stuff.  If we don't buy their stuff they go into administration and they then have to either change their practises so we go back to buying their stuff or they fold.

 

In the end, the power to make or break these big companies rests with us.  We can make them take responsibility for their actions and change the world for better.