Stouffer’s hotel and restaurant chain is a Nestlé subsidiary. Local groups clipped out thousands of Nestlé’s ‘cents-off’ discount coupons and loaded them onto a ‘Boycott Express’, a truck that travelled from San Francisco across the continent to the Nestlé US Headquarters at White Plains, New York, where the coupons were dumped. Nationally coordinated Boycott events linked local events like the ‘Clip Nestlc Quik’ campaign in 1979.
Major church and health organisations endorsed the Boycott. Local educational campaigns spread the boycott Students organised to get Nestlé products off their campuses. By November the Nestlé Boycott had gone national. Audiences reacted by declaring ‘We’re going to stop buying Nestlé products.’ The Minnesota chapter of INFACT formally launched its Boycott in July, 1977. Many INFACT groups used Peter Kreig’ s Bottle Babies documentary film. So they formed INFACT (the Infant Formula Action Coalition) calling for renewed protest against Nestlé. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a National Council of Churches agency, suggested that their groups should file shareholder resolutions with US-based babymilk companies requesting information of their promotional activities.ĭespite the Bern judge’s call for a ‘fundamental rethink’ of Nestlé’s advertising practices, by 1977 the US groups recognised that nothing had changed. Although the judge found that the words used were technically libellous, he said that the verdict did not amount to an acquittal of Nestlé’s advertising practices in developing countries. At the eleventh hour the company dropped all but one charge. They followed with particular interest the ‘Nestlé Kills Babies’ lawsuit in Bern, Switzerland during 1974. But violations continue.Ĭhurch, health and development groups in the US studied the controversy over babymilk sales. ‘In the future, the boycott will stand as an example for other campaigns.’ And since the Boycott started, Nestlé has cut back on direct advertising to mothers on billboards and in publications.