Hello everyone,
My meeting with Nestlé on Tuesday gave me a chance to put some of your questions to them - thanks so much for all your suggestions, they were really useful. I didn’t get a chance to ask all of them, but here’s a summary of the main points and how I felt the meeting went.
Overall I was disappointed that Nestlé are still refusing to budge on sticking with Fairtrade. They aren't committing to match the long-term guarantees on payment and power Fairtrade offers and they rejected the idea of working with both Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance on KitKat.
They also rejected the option of delaying all this until after the Covid-19 pandemic, and the global economic crisis farmers are facing.
On the details of their new scheme they say they will replace Fairtrade – they promised to write to me soon with more detail.
In particular, I’m keen to hear how much money will get to farmers’ cooperatives and how much control they’ll have over it, as this process is still really unclear compared to how transparent it is with Fairtrade.
I don’t want to wait for too long, but let’s see what they come up with in the next few days. So far from what I’ve heard, the bottom line is still that farmers are going to have less financial security and less power.
There were a few hints that Nestlé might be convinced to move on one or two things, but I really want to see this written information they promised me before getting my hopes up - I’ll let you know what they say as soon I hear from them.
But the fact this meeting happened at all shows they recognise lots of us are deeply unhappy about this and will be watching them carefully for weeks, months and even years to come.
I’ll keep you posted on anything further I hear from Nestlé next week - until then please keep sharing the petition if you can. In particular, since Nestle also met the All Party Parliamentary Group on Fairtrade this week and elected representatives in the Scottish and Welsh Parliament are also getting involved, you might want to email your MP, MSP, MS or other local, national or regional representatives to ask them to sign and get behind the campaign.
Thanks again for all your support,
Joanna