The Coke Side of Life
Coke. Everyone knows its bad for you. Wouldn’t it suck if it killed you? Or you had to go without water because they wanted to sell it? Scarily enough, Coca-Cola is one of the worst human-rights violators in the world, according to globalpolicy.org.
In India, Coca-Cola extracted 1.5 million liters of deep well water, which they bottled and sold under the names Dasani and BonAqua. The groundwater was severely depleted, affecting thousands of communities with water shortages and destroying agricultural activity. The remaining water became contaminated with high chloride and bacteria levels, leading to scabs, eye problems, and stomach aches in the local population.
Not only do they have no respect for local communities, but their employees get treated no better.
Between 1989 and 2002, eight union leaders from Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia were killed after protesting the company’s labor practices. Hundreds of other Coca-Cola workers have been kidnapped, tortured, and detained by paramilitaries who intimidate workers to prevent them from unionizing.
What about Nestle? They just produce chocolate right? Yummy yummy chocolate. Despite not being nearly as good as Cadbury these guys are actually pretty shocking as well, knowingly purchasing cocoa beans from suppliers who use forced child labour.
Nestlé buys cocoa beans for its chocolate from farms that use illegal and forced child labor. The company is the third largest buyer of cocoa from the Ivory Coast, has processing, storage and export facilities there, and is well aware that even the US State Department estimates that some 109,000 children are working on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast under the worst and most hazardous form of child labor. This summer, the International Labor Rights Fund and a Birmingham law firm filed a class-action lawsuit against Nestlé and several of its suppliers on behalf of former child slaves.
I’m sure they didn’t know anything about it. But check this out - they’re demanding $6million from Ethiopia for lost profits due to the nationalization of one of its subsidiaries during a communist regime many years ago.
The Swiss-based food giant, Nestle, has defended its demand for $6m in compensation from famine-stricken Ethiopia. The dispute with the Ethiopian Government centres on a livestock firm that was owned by Germany’s Schweisfurth Group, a Nestle subsidiary, before being nationalised by the former communist regime in 1975.
“I think it goes way beyond the legal case,” a Nestle spokesman told the BBC. “I think it is in the interest of the developing countries in general to have a continued flow of foreign direct investment.”
Oxfam has condemned Nestle’s stance, saying there is no justification for diverting Ethiopian Government money to a multinational which made profits of about $3.9bn (£2.4bn) in the first six months of this year.
Ethiopia, with average gross domestic product per person of just $100 a year, faces the prospect of its most serious famine since 1984 after drought caused widespread crop failures earlier this year.
This stuff is seriously shocking. I had had some hope that TNCs weren’t all greedy faceless millionaires with no morals, but it looks like they may be.
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Adey Ben, 2 months without a post is terrible. Get moving!!!!!
yojoe What about Missile Pops?
Shannon OMG. Check it out… http://mudhead.uottawa.ca/~pet e/beard.html
Ben A singular beer won’t quite cut it. But you’re on the right track…
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I think I remember reading once that Dasani water in the UK just came out of a tap, and not even a tap in the North, it was the much-lamer, chalkier waters of the South!
Such atrocities make me very glad that my ulcer altered my diet so I no longer drink any coke products or chocolate.
Whoa. I told you coke was bad for you…