Thanks for your comment.

You’re right that Nestle really, really needs to clean up their act. I just wanted to point out that this can also be seen as a chink in the armour of the giant.

By adopting one Fairtrade product, Nestle are in no way vindicating themselves from the injustices they cause.

People like yourselves are doing a wonderful job by drawing attention to such injustices.

I’m not intending to start buying Kit Kats now that the four finger bars are Fairtrade, but I am glad for those 6,000 farmers.

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 Horkins (co-sponsor of the Horkins-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 of them. There is a danger that the improved conditions for the 6,000 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.

Its Fairtrade product should be seen in this context.

Please see my blogs on this topic, which include a quote from me:
http://boycottnestle.blogspot.com/2009/12/nestle-fairtrade-two-fingers.html