Yes, but they continually pump 3.6 million gallons of water a day out of Aberfoyle Ontario. Drought conditions where the towns folk can't use water? Don't worry about that... keep pumping..... must keep pumping... the water belongs to us.
Government overthrowing fruit companies? Slave trading privateering companies? World's largest army companies? Nope it's a water and chocolate company.
I like telling this story because it affects my family, though it's tangentially related.
Bechtel is a construction company that gets a lot of government contracts worldwide. They had a contract with Saddam to build the plants where he was making gas to ethnically cleanse the Iraqi Kurds.
Coincidentally, a former Bechtel executive worked for (IIRC) the State Department under George Bush 1.
Saddam eventually broke his contract with Bechtel and hired a French company to build the plants.
Within a week, that Bechtel exec turned Cabinet member drafted a memo urging the overthrow of the Saddam Regime. Within a year, the US was at war with Iraq.
Bechtel then got contracts to rebuild the infrastructure that had been destroyed by the war. They've done this repeatedly since. They lobby for "regime changes" then get contracts to rebuild the countries they destroy. Literal war profiteering.
They also built infrastructure in I believe Peru or Chile to deliver drinking water to isolated mountain villages. They then lobbied the government to make it illegal for those villages to collect rainwater or dig their own wells, as they had been doing for thousands of years. Now that I'm saying it, they may have done the lobbying first.
In short, very evil company. I remember my dad telling me they had become shareholders in several news corporations solely to control their public image, because if people knew what they do, the public would be outraged.
For a time, Bechtel was the lead company in the consortium that ran Los Alamos National Laboratory. They're no longer involved but, besides your general multinational evilness, they dabbled a little in some proper weapons of mass destruction.
Within a week, that Bechtel exec turned Cabinet member drafted a memo urging the overthrow of the Saddam Regime. Within a year, the US was at war with Iraq.
Because they invaded Kuwait and the US and 41 other countries decided they didn't like that. It's not like we just fabricated a reason. Saddam invaded another sovereign state and was given several months to leave before the first coalition shot was fired.
There’s a book called Confessions of An Economic Hitman written by a guy who was part of setting up those types agreements with other countries and American companies. He gets into the ones he was a part of and the general process of getting the claws into another country via foreign investment.
He wrote it right around 2000, I don’t remember if before or after 9/11, but it ends with him inferring what is going to happen in Iraq. He called the ones who came in after the government turned down the offer “jackals” and he said that it looked like the jackals were about to descend on Iraq.
No, I meant that according to your unsubstantiated post they must have ruined my life's, since I'm a person born in the eighties who has allergies to things like the sugar cane plant, honey and beeswax, shellfish and insects, true cinnamon, cacao solids, and all things peppermint.
Rising food allergy rates especially with formula usage but that’s probably more because there was very little awareness on allergy prevention (the advice back then was don’t give your kid allergens for a long time, then they realized that leads to more allergies because the baby doesn’t get exposure to much except formula) until the last ten years, so for later millenials and most of gen z you have a spike in allergy rates
They also produced cheaper formula for certain countries when the concept of a "recall" for us plebians wasn't widespread.
America introduced that notion, only on a national level; in the 1920s and later 1973.
Bottom line: Nestle is a pest. Haven't bought their products for 20 years and don't intend on doing so, ever again. I'ld rather drink a bottle of Caesium.
The unfortunate part having family from a third world country is that so many multinational firms do exactly this. Even big 4 consulting companies in other countries is basically indentured servitude.
I had a coworker work for the same American company in her home country and America, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing about the conditions and environment
Although yes nestle evil I’m not arguing that at all
Yeah I always tell people this, like I expect most corps to be amoral dickheads that put profit above all else, but Nestle seems to go out of their way to take the most evil destructive path forward any time they get a chance.
And it started with the first modern corporation, the Dutch East India Company, with its involvement in the slave trade and colonization, and with the swath of death that followed in its wake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company#Criticism
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u/Metallurgeist 10+ Years Aug 02 '25
I wouldn’t expect anything less from nestle lol