Colombia - Nestlé: Nestle’s unfair actions

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Nestlé

Colombia

Nestle’s unfair actions

The recent closure of the Nestle ice-cream plant in the Dominican Republic is new evidence of the worst face of this transnational corporation. Behind a cynical double discourse, depending if it is addressing consumers or its own workers, in fact Nestle absolutely lacks social and human responsibility. The behavior of Nestle with the small dairy producers of Caquetá is another pearl in its string of unfair actions.

The Colombian Department of Caqueta is near the border with Ecuador and Peru. With an area of 98,000 square kilometers, it is one of the largest of the country, located in the Amazon basin, Caqueta has privileged wild life and water resources. Most of the rainforest resources have been depleted to make way for extensive lifestock farming and palm oil monocultures.

Its population is not less than 500 thousand inhabitants, among which there are seven indigenous communities and African-Colombian ones, who share life in Caquetá. Most of them are women and young workers employed in extensive lifestock farming, in precarious jobs, without social security, rural housing programs or education, but with child labor.

UNAC, with the support of Rel-UITA, organized the Caquetá region and included peasants who are small family dairy producers. Nestle has been in Caqueta for 31 years because of the high potential of the region to produce high quality milk. Nestle buys 51 per cent of the production of the 15 areas of the department.

Once, after a night of thunder storm, UNAC members, and other peasants with the same habit of milking in order to deliver milk to the transnational corporation, came across the news delivered by Nestle through their truck drivers: “We are not buying milk any longer for security reasons, we are being stopped by FARC" Peasants were bewildered by the news, their low income from milk at junk price were now at sunset instead of dawn. The trucks left a trail of dust in the roads and never came back.

UNAC got mobilized, went to mayors, local governments and the national management of Nestle in Colombia, as well as the Ministry of Agriculture, but, in view of the results achieved so far, it is more likely to attain peace in Colombia before Nestle, with its deceptive pretext, buys milk from humble peasants. Because this TNC did continue to buy milk from large-scale producers without interruption, at better prices and in larger amounts.

Caquetá is a war theatre of the “democratic security of president Uribe”, and there, the rumor has it that, for the government and transnational companies like Nestle, “peasants who are not guerrillas are suspected of being so”.

In the Dominican Republic, Nestle, at night, like road attackers, closed it doors and with the public forces, very diligent in these cases, stripped workers of their jobs. In Caqueta, the situation is hardly less degrading and brutal, with the complicity of the government authorities, who prioritize supporting large land owners, large producers and Nestle, all of which are disgustingly rich at the expense of social poverty.

The struggle continues.

From Caquetá, Luis Alejandro Pedraza
Rel-UITA
July 24, 2008

Photos: Luis Alejandro Pedraza