Nestlé und das Artensterben - Wo Sinne und Verstand aufeinandertreffen

I think I have given the subject of palm oil too short a shrift. Nestlé recycles as much as 320,000 tonnes of it annually¹. To stay with the betting I love so much... I bet you knew that for the production of the fat contained in virtually every Nestlé product - prominent example KitKat - the habitats and animals of the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia are barbarically destroyed forever². According to the environmental organisation Greenpeace, around 20 square kilometres of rainforest are lost in Indonesia every day because of palm oil.³. Plantations, slash-and-burn, monoculture, species extinction⁴. You know how it is. Okay.

But I bet you didn't know what happens to orangutans that don't fall victim to slash-and-burn? Except maybe if you've read between the lines in this blog about it (see here). Among other things, they are sold as hookers because they are even cheaper than human sex slaves.⁵. There are countless videos on the net. They don't even make a secret of it, it's already so "normal". I find it so disturbing that I don't even want to link it. I'm sure you know how Google works.

Nestlé has a long tradition of telling lies to the public. In the early 2000s, under massive public pressure, the palm oil issue led Nestlé to finally vow to do better in 2010. By 2015, palm oil would only be sourced from sustainable sources. Apart from the fact that it cannot be sustainable to stretch a German butter with palm oil from the Far South East out of greed for profit, it is completely irrelevant how it is produced (my Opinion), Nestlé has so far not even managed to implement their own standard of sustainability (a Measurement)⁶.

And I would like to quote a report by the Goethe Institute that is worth reading about the standards applied by companies that, like Nestlé, know how to greenwash. The Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil, for example, has 1934 full members, including 973 consumer goods and trading companies, 887 palm oil companies and 15 banks - but only 50 NGOs. Accordingly, there are also no or only little effective sanctions if the members violate the - often weak anyway - specifications that they themselves co-determine⁷. It all sounds like self-control in disguise to me.

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And so you can look at virtually any product, hardly any are produced without animal suffering. It is important to me that all statements are based on evidence-based measurements. Of course, it is comod that the measurements consistently confirm my opinion. Nestlé sucks. Full stop. Whether it's the industrially produced milk powder⁸ (although I think I'm really bad anyway and haven't drunk it for ages, long before I became vegan, other topic), GM milk in baby food that is not labelled as such.⁹Ralph Lauren's products tested on animals¹⁰ (my guess is fragrances in perfume, solvents in dyes in the textile industry, unfortunately one finds few useful details on this), poultry production for large corporate brands such as Buitoni, Wagner, Maggi or Herta, which to this day does not even meet the EU minimum standards.¹¹. All this is sold under the flimsy guise of alleged sustainability.

Another example. "Save the Planet" is written on dog food from Nestlé's Terra Canis brand. For every can of meat sold in this edition, a donation is supposed to go towards reforestation, the production of solar lights in Africa or ocean clean-up. What is not written on the meat-containing dog food package: That it is precisely the immense and globally growing consumption of meat that contributes significantly to the destruction of forests. These are destroyed, among other things, in order to grow animal feed such as soya, and preferably in climate-damaging monocultures.¹². Everything about Nestlé is shit. Oh, you didn't know about the dog food? Yes, yes, even the well-known cat food Felix is actually Nestlé.¹³

That was not all. They don't even plan to comply with EU directives and say so openly in interviews. By 2026, Nestlé production sites "should" comply with the EU's minimum standards.¹⁴. Yes. Should. We can reconsider in three years. Depending on whether consumers switch to less polluting alternatives or not.

That was not all. The lofty goal of setting the minimum standards as a target for sometime, then, of course only applies to the European market. In the rest of the world, Nestlé obviously sees no need for action. I seriously ask myself whether there are any control bodies for animal welfare in the EU at all. It can't be right that a company like Nestlé tramples European regulations underfoot and nobody cares. Nestlé, you suck.

That's not all. In the latest marketing video, Nestlé goes one better. I wonder what they took. Probably too much sniffing of the company's own tea. There's no other way to come up with such ideas. A paid actress stands there and pretends to interview experts on the subject of sustainability in a critical style. But all she hears are Nestlé employees. The result is that the scripted presenter stands solo in front of the camera and comes to the conclusion of the interview with experts:

So palm oil monocultures in Southeast Asia can not only be sustainable, they can even be really good for the environment.

Nestlé on the impact of palm oil production on nature

Holy shit. Unfortunately, the original video is no longer available on the Nestlé website. Within a very short time, the bubble was hammered by an unparalleled shitstorm, so that the campaign was erased from the company's history. By erased, I really mean gone, untraceable, gone. Only as a second-hand source can it still be seen as a reaction by well-known Youtubers.¹⁵. Well done, Nestlé. This is how you create transparency and consumer trust.

So it is up to us. It is in our hands.

Money does rule the world. At least as long as there is clean and safe water and insects, the basis of everything we eat and drink. If we no longer have insects, without which no coffee bean will grow, and no water to brew coffee... at least I won't have to worry about how to offer my guests delicious coffee without the fancy Nespresso Professional in the kitchen. To the right Coffee maker I don't let my carers have a go in the living room. They can't even keep the living room table clean for two hours.

Nestlé and the extinction of species