The Libertarian Editorials (Dec. 1979)

In praise of the Nestle boycott

Anyone who’s ever spent much time in the supermarket knows about the Nestle company. It’s a giant, Swiss-based, multinational conglomerate which manufactures various chocolate products and either manufactures or distributes Libby’s canned goods, Stouffer’s frozen foods, Taster’s Choice coffee, and a number of other foodstuffs, including baby formula. It is this last product which has recently got Nestle in trouble with its customers all over the world and has led to the formation of something called the Nestle Boycott.

According to the Infant Formula Action Coalition (INFACT), the organizer of the boycott, Nestle already sells a third of all the baby formula in the world. But the declining birth rate in the industrialized Western nations has forced the company in recent years to look elsewhere for enough new business to make up for its declining old business. The search for new markets has taken Nestle, predictably enough, to the Third World, where it has launched expensive, aggressive advertising campaigns which the boycott organizers say are designed to convince Third World mothers that bottle feeding is advanced and scientific, while breast feeding is primitive and backward. The campaigns have even been extended, say Nestle’s critics, to the length of hiring women to dress up as nurses and call on new mothers to offer them free formula samples.

The problem with all this is that since the water supply in their countries is usually polluted, Third World mothers mix their Nestle baby formula with contaminated water. (They frequently can’t afford the fuel required to boil, and thereby sterilize, the water.) Also, since they ordinarily can’t afford to buy it in sufficient quantity to replace their own milk, they dilute the formula beyond the manufacturer’s instructions, and then, also contrary to instructions, fail to refrigerate it. (In some cases, of course, they are illiterate and unable to read the instructions, even if they had the will and the wherewithal to follow them. And almost none of them own refrigerators.) The result is thousands of sick, malnourished babies who would be at least reasonably healthy if their mothers had nursed them. By the time their mothers reach this conclusion for themselves, if they do, their own milk has dried up and they are left with no alternatives. According to the organizers of the Nestle Boycott, this state of affairs has become so commonplace in the Third World that doctors there have begun speaking of an “epidemic” of “baby bottle disease.”

It is worth noting at this point that these accusations against Nestle do not add up to a substantial charge of violating anyone’s rights. No Third World mother is forced to substitute Nestle formula for her own milk, or to mix that formula with contaminated water, or to stretch that formula so that it lasts three or four times as long as it was meant to last and leaves her baby malnourished. It seems obvious to many people, this writer included, that Nestle is guilty, on the other hand, of callous and insensitive behavior—some might say, of a breach of that fundamental rule of human morality which stipulates that one do unto others as one would have others do unto oneself. Some libertarians might not agree—though all would presumably agree that such a breach, however, morally contemptible it might be, should not be legally actionable.

It is therefore significant from a libertarian point of view that the organizers of the Nestle Boycott are not seeking government action of any kind against Nestle. Rather, they are taking the form of voluntary action which is best suited to such cases: they are refusing, individually and collectively, to buy the products of a corporation whose policies they find morally offensive. Contrast this with the stance of the Nestle company in its official replies to the boycotters’ charges. “The real problem,” Nestle declares in a white paper called “The Infant Formula Controversy: A Nestle View,”

involves total infant nutrition throughout the Third World. It is a much more complex and important issue than the single aspect that deals with product promotion. . . . Nestle believes solutions to this larger issue, and whatever role infant formula may play in it, lie in approaching the problem on the basis of shared responsibility. Industry as a whole, governments—with an emphasis on the governments of developing nations—the medical profession, international agencies and others with a stake in the issue must work together to find a solution.

The organizers of the Nestle Boycott are calling for voluntary collective action against an organization they regard as a wrongdoer; the Nestle company is calling for the seizure of funds (through taxation) principally from the already poverty stricken citizens of Third World nations, to finance the creation of a legitimate market for its products. It would seem obvious which side of the dispute should appeal more to an advocate of liberty.

At the same time, as has been mentioned, some libertarians may disagree with the proposition that Nestle’s policy is immoral or inhumane and may choose not to boycott the firm’s products. And, in fairness, it should be acknowledged that not every detail of the case against Nestle has been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. An example or two will suffice to indicate the nature of the still-arguable points: the boycott sponsors argue that “in Singapore, in 1951, 71 percent of all babies from low-income families were breastfed. Twenty years later, only 5 percent were.” Nestle makes no effort to deny this figure, but points out that the infant mortality rate in Singapore “stands at just over 12 per thousand, one of the lowest rates in the world, and below that of the United States.” The boycott organizers retort that the major problem from baby bottle disease is not death, but malnutrition and resulting mental retardation, along with a higher rate of disease. Nestle replies that sound studies proving that bottle-fed babies are less healthy than breastfed babies are nearly impossible to find. The boycott organizers retort that “dozens of studies, old ones from the first half of this century, and very recent ones, some from Western industrialized countries and others from the Third World . . . show a much higher disease incidence in bottlefed than in breastfed infants. No scientist or immunologist can deny the fact that human colostrum and breast milk contain substances which confer immunity on the infant and protect him from infections, and that infant formulas do not contain these substances.” And so it goes.

More important than these details, however, is the central fact of the boycotters’ argument, which Nestle makes no effort to deny—that some number of innocent children is being subjected to needless disease and death because their parents are being persuaded to feed them a commercial product which they have neither the knowledge nor the money nor the kitchen equipment to use properly. Those who disapprove of such persuasion are boycotting the persuaders—and, as of our most recent information, have convinced the persuaders to modify certain of their Third World advertising and marketing practices. Multinational giants, it seems, are as much at the mercy of their customers as are mom and pop stores—and this is a lesson which needs to receive wide circulation in these days of running to government for redress of any and all ills. Libertarians who desire not only a free society, but also a decent and humane one, should support the spirit of the Nestle Boycott. —JR

The Nestle boycott: the unsettled issues

It isn’t that simple. The only praise which can be sung for the Nestle boycott in any unambiguous way is over the (temporary?) fact that it is a boycott which is being called for, and not government action. Yet.

But those who have called the boycott are unfortunately doing much the same thing as consumerists in every area: they are focusing on one aspect of the trade in a product or practice, to the exclusion of all else; and they are making moral judgments based on an evaluation of that single aspect. But, it might be responded, when that one aspect involves the health—even the very life—of a helpless infant, what other considerations need come into play? The answer is: plenty.

If the conflict were only between the relative safety of breastfeeding infants versus the use of supplements or substitutes, then it might be easily addressed. But there are other questions, not all of them, incidentally, pointing in a direction favorable to Nestle.

The plain fact is that it is not only the water which is in sad shape in Third World countries, but nearly everything else as well. Poverty is everywhere, and with it a low standard of living on all levels. That is why it is often difficult for mothers to nurse their babies without any further considerations. Many mothers in Third World countries are themselves malnourished, and breast feeding is often sadly inadequate in such cases. Moreover, many mothers desperately need to work to help support the family. Breast-feeding can so seriously tie up a mother’s time as to make this difficult, if not impossible, in some cases. And since there is more to health than nutrition, who is to say that it is better to sacrifice the increased standard of living—including the ability to afford medical supplies—which results from a working mother’s added income?

Of course, some of the boycott advocates have a solution to this: it is to have the government support mothers of newborn children for the first three months after the infant’s birth. Yet this sorely misjudges the economic conditions in Third World countries, as well as the hardships imposed on others from the marginal taxation needed to finance such humanitarian goals. And so it stands: the choice is not merely between breast-feeding and some other, commercial, method of feeding babies. The choice is between different ways of solving complicated problems which people in the Third World face.

Moreover, the boycotters aren’t even facing up to the problems they themselves raise: the nourishment of newborn babies. Many experts who have studied Third World conditions and the needs of infants there agree that breast-feeding should only be the sole source of nutrition during the first three months of life. After that, supplements at the very least are needed, or the infant’s health and growth will be adversely affected. So what, then, are the mothers to turn to for a supplement? The only alternatives here are native weaning foods and commercial foods such as Nestle’s. Unfortunately, the result is that in many cases in the Third World, native weaning foods are even more dangerous than commercial foods such as those prepared by Nestle’s. For mothers to rely on such alternatives, then, may be even more risky for the child than reliance on the admittedly inadequate Nestle products. And unless we consider this unfortunate choice open to Third World mothers, we have no business offering advice, let alone challenging a company which does give them an alternative as a “murderer,” as some of the boycott people have called Nestle.

One of the complaints against Nestle’s products and its promotion is that the products are being used by mothers who have not the means or inclination to use the formula properly. True enough. But this has led INFACT to demand that “artificial formulas . . . be prevented from getting into the hands of people who do not have the means or facility to use [them] safely.” Now, just how is that to be done—without also keeping it out of the hands of those who can use it safely, to enhance their children’s lives and well-being? Indeed, even after Nestle caved in to a host of irrational recommendations for a meeting on infant and young child feeding organized by the World Health Organization and UNICEF, INFACT proclaimed that the Nestle boycott “must continue until the companies make direct and enforceable commitments to halting all formula promotion.”

To take that path may well keep some of the formula out of the hands of those who, through lack of tools (such as the ability to sterilize water) or through ignorance, cannot use it properly. But, again, it will also succeed in keeping it out of the hands of those who can use it safely and properly. The boycotters neglect the crucially important truth that whatever its intended use, advertising has the inevitable effect of spreading knowledge. They instead adhere to the fallacy of advertising determinism, which holds that advertising somehow circumvents people’s critical faculties, forcing them to slavishly use whatever is advertised. Nothing could be more elitist in attitude, or more condescending toward Third World people.

Far worse are the craven actions of Nestle, which, instead of taking the claims of the boycotters seriously, and moving to address them in a way which maximizes the positive, constructive use of its products in the Third World, has instead caved into a crazed list of “recommendations” made by the WHO/UNICEF meeting last month.

First on this list of “recommendations” is this:

“The government of each country has the responsibility to promote coherent foods and nutrition policies which should give special attention to mothers, infants and children…. Governments have a duty to ensure the supply and availability of adequate infant food products to those who need them, in ways that will not discourage breastfeeding.” Moreover, there should be no sales promotion, including promotional advertising to the public of products to be used as breastmilk substitutes or bottle-fed supplements and feeding bottles…. There should be an international code of marketing for infant formula and other products used as breastmilk substitutes. This should be supported by both exporting and importing countries and observed by all manufacturers…. There should be no marketing or availability of infant formula or weaning foods in a country unless marketing practice is in accord with the national code or legislation…. Facilities of the health care system should never be used for the promotion of artificial feeding.

This and much more has been endorsed by Nestle.

All of these demands rest upon the baseless assumption that conditions everywhere are the same, that government has either the competence or the right to regulate anything so vital and personal as nutrition, that advertising of substitutes for or supplements to breast-feeding can only have harmful consequences, and that there can never be a sound reason to promote artificial feeding through a health-care system. None of these assumptions is true and every one of them, if codified, will result in harm.

Nestle is neither blameless for its often thoughtless promotion of products to people who are not able to use them properly, nor blameless for the harmful consequences which are likely to follow on the heels of these policies.

One thing is certain: there are no simple answers here, even if the boycotters are right in stressing the harm which Nestle’s products can do when they are not used properly. One solution, to which neither side has looked—because it is a long-run solution—is to smash government control of the economy and of people’s lives in Third World countries. Government opposition to birth control and abortion—policies which are leading to skyrocketing birth rates—and to a free market economy have done much to brutalize all the people of those areas of the world, both children and adults.

In the meantime, Nestle should do everything it can to see that its products end up in hands capable of using them properly, and the boycotters, while remaining watchdogs, should point their fingers not merely at Nestle, but also at the Third World governments whose policies routinely grind people into the dirt, obliterating both life and hope.

—RAC

Women against pornography?

Over the last year and a half, feminists have been on the march again violent pornography—the sort that features bondage, subjection, torture, and sometimes even the mutilation of women. Organizations like Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW) and Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media (WAVPM) have mounted mass demonstrations in cities like Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco. The latest was a march and demonstration against the Times Square porno district in New York City on October 20, sponsored by Women Against Pornography (WAP), a group that has been conducting sightseeing tours of the outlets for pornography in the area from its Time Square office. According to the New York Times, more than 5,000 demonstrators marched, chanting, among other slogans, “Clean it up, shut it down, make New York a safer town.”

Feminists are distressed that such marches are often seen as attempts to bend the First Amendment by calling for censorship, and they protest that they want instead to publicize the false nature of the message that all women want to be battered, which violent pornography implies. So far, so good.

But several questions come to mind about the recent WAP demonstration. Why did Women Against Pornography, which is affiliated with the West-Coast based Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media, adopt the shorter name? Some think that it is because they are against more than violence, but represent instead the cutting edge of a new puritanism that is against any explicit depiction of male-female sexual relations because they see all heterosexual relations as inherently violent—because of what they see as the patriarchal structure of contemporary society.

WAP is certainly not making itself clear if it is calling for a private economic boycott and not government action. One suspects that its members think that only some government action is censorship. Why else has Susan Brownmiller, the feminist most publicly identified with WAP, been widely quoted as saying that pornography is not protected by the First Amendment? And why did Bella Abzug reiterate this message at the demonstration itself? And what did Lynn Campbell, co-organizer of the march, mean to indicate when she stated that “our group is demanding awareness, not censorship. If legislation grows out of our actions, we’ll comment on the specific legislation at that time”?”

Are they fronting for city government attempts to clean up Times Square? Is that why they combine an economic protest with statements that pornography is not protected by the First Amendment, which carries the clear implication that government action against it would be all right? It seems as if WAP wants to have it both ways: although the demonstrators were not specifically advocating any legislation or other government action, some critical feminists were circulating information that the organizers were promoting the plans of a group that wants to have the entire Times Square area condemned as an urban renewal project. Now that’s not a private boycott.

WAP gets its office rent-free from the quasi-governmental Forty-Second Street Redevelopment Corporation. It has been publicly supported by the Mid-Town Enforcement Agency, a branch of the New York Police Department, whose director issued a statement saying that “our means and ends may not be exactly the same, but the issue of pornography is obviously a matter of concern to both the city and feminists.” And among WAP’s financial supporters is OTB, the New York City agency that has a city-wide monopoly on Off Track Betting. (Apparently the city government wants only official vice to flourish in Times Square.)

Other feminist organizations against violence that are directed against women have made it clear that they are calling for private action. WAP is not making it clear—perhaps because it is not consciousness-raising about violence, but is promoting the urban-renewal destruction of the Times Square porno district. While the First Amendment protects demonstrations against ideas as strongly as it protects the printing presses of the offending ideologues, it does forbid government action to “Clean it up; shut it down”—even city government action.

—JKT

Revolution in El Salvador

Jimmy Carter’s human rights policy is a farce. Look at his treatment of the tiny Central American nation of El Salvador. Until early October, the nation was ruled by a right-wing military dictatorship propped up and supported by the United States. The Carter administration did threaten El Salvador with a cutoff of military aid three years ago, and then followed through on the threat—because the dictatorship was making up for its size by building a reputation as one of the world’s worst human rights violators. So the U.S. officially cut off all military aid, but the economic aid continued to flow. In fact the U.S. Agency for International Development chipped in with an $8-million “basic human need” loan, and the U.S.-supported Inter-American Development Bank donated another $30-million. General Carlos Romero’s Congress then merely transferred some 21-million of those dollars out of housing, education and health into the military. In the beginning of 1979, while the U.S. still publicly supported the regime of General Romero, the government passed on another $10-million in economic aid.

One wonders how much of this ultimately was used to torture, imprison, threaten, and kill. The Roman Catholic church in San Salvador estimates that 406 citizens were assassinated for political reasons by the government in the first six months of this year. And hundreds of others have simply “disappeared after arrest,” a technique becoming alarmingly widespread in Central and South American countries. So repressive had become the rule of Romero’s fraudulently-elected regime that one could be tossed into jail just for wearing the campaign button of an opposition party. And the government openly encouraged the activities of a terrorist group called “ORDEN” (Order) which was fond of shooting fathers in the company of their children, and priests before their congregations. The tactics of government and its supporters were clear —scare and intimidate the populace into quiet, faithful obedience of government and military authorities.

For those who despaired of living in El Salvador because of the economic or political conditions, the countries to the north naturally beckoned. And what of the reception by the U.S. to persons fleeing for their lives from Romero’s practices? That reception was mod-elled from the 1952 McCar-ran-Walter Act, setting U.S. policy for refugees. It only grants refugee status and political exile to those escaping from communist countries and the Middle East. It makes no provision for persons fleeing right-wing military dictatorships. Thus, a ballet dancer leaving the Soviet Union for “artistic purposes” is welcomed with open arms, immediately; but a priest running for his life from El Salvador cannot stay in the U.S. unless he can present evidence proving his need for political asylum. And for such persons illegally entering the U.S. and caught by immigration officials, there is little opportunity to make a strong showing in their 15-minute hearing. The truth is that only one person from El Salvador has been able to obtain such political asylum between 1971 and 1979, out of the almost 2,000 persons given this favored status during that period. And the treatment of refugees from other American nations isn’t any better. In 1973 when the democratically elected government of Chile was ousted by a military junta supported by the U.S., more than 30,000 Chileans needed to leave their homeland quickly or risk death. But only 76 of these persons were allowed to enter here. Contrast this sum with the general parole given 150,000 Indochinese and hundreds of thousands of Cubans fleeing Castro’s communism.

Before the fall of Romero’s government, El Salva-dorians fleeing their nation and captured by immigration officials in California were being deported daily on a Pan Am flight between Los Angeles and San Salvador, even though it was well known that many who de-barked from that aircraft were arrested and killed by Romero. The U.S. government must stop paying lip service to human rights. It must end Ugly American interventionism which props up oppressive regimes like Romero’s and it must stop discriminating among aliens seeking refuge here. —LJN

Who needs the MX?

It is somewhat ironic that in his efforts to win Senate approval of the SALT II treaty President Carter is being forced into launching the largest strategic arms expansion since the “missile-gap” period of the late 1950s. The purpose is to buy conservative votes for ratification while helping to protect his administration against charges of appeasement, such as those recently made by Senator Henry Jackson of Washington.

Carter’s first move was to ask for a real five percent increase in the defense budget for fiscal 1980. This means five percent on top of inflation, or closer to 15 percent in real terms. Next was a boost in civil defense spending, surely one of the most useless expenditures in the entire budget. Now Carter has announced his support for the MX missile program, a pet Defense Department scheme for ages.

The MX is a huge missile, weighing 95 tons (as opposed to 39 tons for a Minuteman III), with 10 thermonuclear warheads (the Minuteman has 3), requiring the building of deep twenty-mile-long trenches along which the missile can be moved on rails to protect it from attack. The cost of deploying the MX missile is estimated by the administration to be $30-billion, although Senator William Proxmire says that the true cost may be as much as $70-billion.

There seems to be little question that Carter’s only purpose in moving ahead with the MX program is to fend off conservative political attacks. In fact, shortly after the MX program was announced one of President Carter’s assistants, Joel McCleary, deputy assistant for political liaison at the White House, told a student audience that “we are wasting billions of dollars to placate” conservatives in Congress. Nevertheless, he went on to say, this still represents billions of dollars of savings “because if they had their way what we would spend is mind boggling.”

Needless to say, the conservatives have not been appeased. Rather than being satisfied with concessions, the conservatives have re-doubled their attacks on Carter and the SALT treaty, somewhat like animals which have tasted blood. They feel that Carter’s support for the MX only proves how scared he is of the militarist Right.

Interestingly, Carter’s rejection of alternatives to the MX has brought criticism from both Left and Right. Senator Mark Hatfield, an MX foe, has charged that President Carter grossly overestimated the cost of converting the existing Minuteman missile system to a mobile mode. According to a Library of Congress study released by Hatfield, the Minuteman could be made mobile for several billion dollars less than it would cost to build the MX. Conservatives, on the other hand, are concerned about Carter’s rejection of the Air Force proposal for the MX, which would utilize covert shuttling of 200 MX missiles among 4,000 underground silos in lieu of the trench system approved by Carter. The Air Force proposal would have cost at least $7-billion less than the approved plan. This fact led conservative columnists Evans and Novak to speculate that Carter was possibly setting up the MX for later abandonment on budget grounds once the SALT treaty was approved, just as the B-1 was terminated.

The fundamental question remains, however, as to whether any kind of massive upgrading of our strategic weapons system is needed or justified.

Some conservatives, like Dr. Robert Pranger of the American Enterprise Institute, have come out against building the MX. Pranger recently testified before Congress that it would be better to counter the Soviets by projecting self confidence and taking the conceptual jolt which would be required to establish key changes in tactical and strategic thinking, as opposed to increases and decreases in spending. If we can communicate the impression that “we are creative and we are imaginative in our leadership, that might be more impressive than simply increasing the defense budget,” Pranger said.

A more radical response still would be to force a total reappraisal of war as an institution. As foreign policy expert Robert Johansen recently wrote in Harper’s,

To oppose the political Right is easier than to oppose the war system, but it is also less promising. To think seriously about abolishing war as an accepted institution means a fundamental questioning of the present international system, where we all enjoy privileges because of the present global distribution of power and wealth. Yet without commitment to demilitar-ization of the world security system, one or two weapons systems will come and go, as SALT fails or succeeds. But the return to new arms buildups, ‘like the craving for a fix by an unreformed addict, will always return until steps are taken to kick the military habit completely—a message that should be carried to our Senators rather than the appeal to vote “yes” on SALT II. —BRB