Let Them Drink Formula and Eat Steak - 'Nestlé Family Blogger Event' Fallout

It's ironic that a sweet, simple line drawing of a mother bird perched on a nest, poised to feed her two baby birds, is the logo of multinational conglomerate Nestlé, the world's largest food company and one of the most boycotted because it sells infant formula -- a product it invented over 140 years ago --  in the Third World, where it's even more critical that infants drink their mother's breastmilk instead of formula derived from cow's milk.

Formula for Disaster

What's so bad about infant formula? Mix it with unsafe drinking water in bottles that aren't sterilized and babies can get sick and even die.  These are very real problems in underdeveloped countries where contaminated water and little understanding of the need to sterilize (or lack of equipment to do so) often lead to diarrhea in infants, which in turn can cause death.

Even babies fed formula mixed with clean water are at risk of malnourishment when well-meaning mothers who can't afford enough formula thin it with additional water to extend it.

For these and other reasons, it's estimated that over a million babies die each year because they are bottle-fed instead of breastfed.

Taking It to the Mommybloggers

Aware of its poor image in many parenting circles,  Nestlé did something last week that more and more companies are doing. It went to the blogosphere to elicit a more positive buzz. The company invited 20 top mommybloggers (and a couple of dads too) to go to California on an two-day all-expense-paid trip to meet with its U.S. CEO, a Nestlé chef and a fitness expert.

If that weren't enough, apparently they sent Omaha steaks to the husbands back home to keep them happy while their wives were away on this "Nestlé Family Blogger Event" junket.

Activists All A-Twitter

Some women, aware of Nestlé's history, declined the trip. But many others accepted, including some breastfeeding advocates. And once the bloggers began posting on their blogs during the trip -- and going on Twitter with the hashtag #nestlefamily for others to follow their tweets -- the Twittersphere exploded in an hours-long heated debate, with some getting angry, some going on the defensive, and some oblivious to the larger issues.

Tempest in a Tweetpot?

For a thorough look at the Nestlé Family event, the  Twitter brouhaha, the reactions of some of the leading "responsible motherhood" bloggers -- and an examination of the larger issues -- there's a detailed recap, "Getting to the point of #nestlefamily" at Evil Slutopia. Not only do they address the actions of Nestlé and whether or not "all companies do bad stuff" but they also report on how the #nestlefamily debate on Twitter rapidly descended into an ugly series of  140-character moments that make the health reform debate look like a DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) tea. (With words like 'nazis,' 'communists,' and 'pro-abortion hypocrites' flying around, the hate was evident.)

Was the Nestlé Family event blown out of proportion? It depends on whether or not you believe the internet can be an engine of social change and a valuable tool for the advancement of knowledge, or a way to score a trip to California (or a pair of free Crocs, or a fancy dinner at a posh restaurant courtesy of Nikon.)

Won't Bite the Hand that Feeds It

Many of the arguments posed by the pro-Nestlé Family eventers relied on the age-old argument that the company couldn't possibly have done anything bad "because the media would be all over it and I haven't heard a thing."

Think about it. As the world's largest food and beverage company, if most mainstream media outlets ran any stories about the Nestlé formula issue, they'd risk their bottom line because companies are notorious for pulling their advertising dollars if there's a whiff of anything that puts them in a bad light. Newspapers, radio, television are not in the business to solely promote the public good; they need to make money and be profitable. It makes sense that the mainstream media won't bite the hand that feeds it.

Word Getting Around

Yes stories are surfacing. A week ago, the Telegraph published "Nestlé: the world's biggest food company and one of the 'most boycotted'. The Boycott Nestlé blog, which is maintained by the group Baby Milk Action, addresses the specific points brought up by the #nestlefamily bloggers and tweeters.

And there's growing awareness of International Nestlé-Free Week, a boycott scheduled for October 26, November 1, 2009, which coincides with another event that profits Nestlé -- Halloween.

The Wrong Kind of Attention

In the end, Nestlé may have created more bad press for itself than good. Hoping to convince 20 mommybloggers to say nice things about their products, they've inadvertently opened the floodgates for hundreds of bloggers and thousands of readers (unfamiliar with Nestlé's formula sales in Third World nations or the Boycott Nestlé movement) to learn more about the company's less savory practices.

In trying to wine and dine the moms and feed steaks to the dads, they've drawn attention to this undisputable fact that even the World Health Organization and UNICEF acknowledge: by fostering an environment that lets them drink formula, Nestlé is selling a preventable death to the millions of babies who could be breastfed but aren't by mothers who don't know any better.