Friday 20 December 2002

Retreat by Nestle on Ethiopia's $6m debt

The greed of these people is unceasing, they have no shame, no morals and no humanity. This is what capitalism is all about, this is where those bastards want us to go. I strongly recommend anyone reading this to stop buying Nestle products, period. They're not scared of us as long as they think they can lie to us and get away with it, as soon as they are exposed they go running for cover. They are just cowardly capitalist scumbags!

Nestle, the world's largest coffee company, was forced into a humiliating climbdown yesterday after a wave of public outrage greeted its demand for a $6m (£3.7m) payment from the government of famine stricken Ethiopia.

The company promised to invest any money it receives from Ethiopia back in the country after receiving thousands of emails of protest in response to the story in yesterday's Guardian.

At an emergency meeting in its Swiss HQ last night, senior executives were mulling over the public relations damage. The claim represents about an hour's turnover for a company which posted sales of $59.36bn and pre-tax profits of $6.15bn last year.

Nestle - fearing a consumer boycott of its products across Europe - is considering donating some of the money it is demanding to help feed the 11 million Ethiopians who face starvation in coming months.

Full story...