Kit Kat Goes Fair Trade In the UK
By: Ainsley Brown
“Gimme a break, gimme a break, break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar,” has taken on a new meaning in the UK as Kit Kat ‘breaks off’ some cash cocoa to farmers.
Nestlé, the Swiss makers of Kit Kat, has announced that the very tasty chocolate snack as of mid-January will become a Fair Trade product. The £ 1,060 minimum price per tonne of cocoa will target farmers in the Ivory Coast where Nestlé get most of its cocoa from. Nestlé also plans to spend £65 million over the next 10 years to improve farming communities in the Ivory Coast. Additionally, Nestlé also plans to continue its programme of giving framers cocoa plants, many of which have reach or are close to their 30 year life cycle.
This will be welcomed news not only in the Ivory Coast, which supplies 43% of the world’s cocoa, but also to all players in the cocoa market, after cocoa reached a 30 year high this year. The sharp increase is the result of a combination of factors including the bloody civil war fought in the Ivory Coast between 2002- 2003, poor weather, disease, under-investment and poor management of coca cultivations.
No word on when Fair Trade Kit Kat will hit the North American markets – hopefully soon.
Not as good news as Nestlé wants people to believe. Nestlé Fairtrade KitKat involves just 1% of Nestlé’s cocoa purchase. Also interesting to note that the amount Nestlé will pay on the Fairtrade premium for the cocoa it is due to buy in 2010 (less than £400,000) is less than 1% of expenditure on its current UK Nescafé advertising campaign (£43 million). For its money, Nestlé has generated stories around the world like the above, that miss out some of the following key facts.
Nestlé has been taken to court in the US for failing to act on a 2001 agreement to end child slavery in its cocoa supply chain and in the past has boycotted a meeting by Senator Harkin (co-sponsor of the Harkin-Engel Protocol in the US) called to examine lack of progress. There are 11 million people dependent on cocoa farming in West Africa, many of them dependent on Nestlé. The KitKat products involved in this scheme will benefit only 6,000 farmers. There is a danger that the improved conditions for these farmers will divert attention from the many others outside the scheme, and be used deliberately to this end by Nestlé.
Stop the Traffik, founded by Steve Chalke, the United Nations Special Advisor on Community Action Against Human Trafficking, said in response to the announcement that ‘two finger’ Kit Kats and all of Nestlé’s other chocolate products ““will continue to exploit the chocolate slaves of the Ivory Coast from where Nestlé source most of their cocoa”.” See:
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/10757
This is a similar situation to its Fairtrade coffee, which involves just 0.1% of the coffee farmers dependent on it, but is used to suggest it is making a huge difference, providing cover for continued unethical practices.
In addition, Nestlé is the most boycotted company in the UK and one of the four most boycotted companies on the planet according to GMIPoll because of the way it pushes its breastmilk substitutes. Nestlé systematically breaches the baby milk marketing standards adopted by the World Health Assembly, undermines breastfeeding and contributes to the unnecessary death and suffering of babies. According to UNICEF, 1.5 million babies die around the world every year because they are not breastfed. Even Nestlé’s Global Public Affairs Manager, Dr. Gayle Crozier Willi, admitted in 2007 that Nestlé is ‘widely boycotted’.
Fairtrade KitKat will be added to the boycott list. The boycot has forced some changes in Nestlé marketing practices and policies, but the company, the market leader, refuses to make all necessary changes and is still the worst of the baby food companies. At the present time it is being targeted for practices that include claiming its infant formula ‘protects’ babies – it does not, babies fed on it are more likely to become sick than breastfed babies and in conditions of poverty, they are more likely to die. See:
http://boycottnestle.blogspot.com/2009/11/nestle-fairtrade-kitkat.html
Perhaps most disgraceful of all is that the UK Minister for Trade and Development, Gareth Thomas MP, brushed aside a question at a UN press conference about Nestlé’s record in developing countries by citing the benefits to the farmers supplying cocoa for the Fairtrade KitKat. For what I think he should have said see:
http://boycottnestle.blogspot.com/2009/12/nestle-kitkat-minister.html
Nestlé’s Fairtrade product should be seen in this context.
Mike,
Thanks for the insight. I enjoyed reading your view and I am sure likewise can be said for the readers of Commercial Law International.