So Nestlé has been in the news again. And, as ever, they’re not painted in a great light.
The negative publicity followed a Greenpeace campaign launched this week, which accused Nestlé of sourcing palm oil from unsustainably managed rainforests in Indonesia and destroying the habitat of endangered orang-utans.
As a result, Nestlé experienced a backlash as they made the questionable judgement of encouraging debate on their Facebook page.
It didn’t go so well. It wasn’t long before comments included:
“You know what your doing Nestlé. i am surprised you sleep at night ..stop using palmoil from rainforests..you have blood on your hands. when the planet is used up we die.” (sic)
In fact, they got a lot worse. But this is a family-friendly blog, so I’ll let you visit the site if you want to see the full horror.
The gruesome video that accompanied the campaign showed an office worker opening a Kit Kat and, instead of breaking off a bar of chocolate, breaking off an orang-utan’s finger and taking a bite, covering his keyboard with blood.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I really don’t like Nestlé and would stand shoulder to shoulder with the guys who protest against them. But when I saw the spoof Kit Kat video that is doing the rounds—and some of the reactions to it—I was almost as annoyed with my fellow activists as I was with Nestlé.
Don’t you guys get it? The problem here is deforestation.
Nestlé are [allegedly] bad because they are destroying the habitat. They are NOT systematically dismembering individual animals.
There is NOT a man with a pith helmet and a Nestlé lapel badge walking around Indonesia pulling them out of trees and killing them. So why create a video that gives that impression by showing someone biting into an orang-utan finger?
So, while I applaud their motives [and understand the principle of shock advertising], I get really wound up with campaigns like this that cloud the issue.
Sure, they’re making a point, but do they think we’re so stupid that we won’t understand the point about deforestation and have to be fed sensationalist crap like their video?
Do they think the typical environmentally aware person has a brain the size of a monkey?
Please separate animal cruelty from habitat destruction and don’t take me for a fool.
