Infant milk formula is a common, useful, popular, widely used in the Unites States and Europe as a substitute for mother's milk. It comes as a powder that is to be mixed in a specific proportion with sterilized water. It is useful product to supplement a woman's milk when she does not produce enough for her infant. In an attempt to increase sales, Nestle, as well as other producers of infant formula, extended the sale of their product to many countries in Africa. They followed some of the same marketing techniques that they had followed with success and without customer complaint elsewhere.
One standard technique was advertising on billboards and in magazines. A second was the distribution of free samples in hospitals to new mothers as well as to doctors. In themselves, these and other practices were neither illegal nor unethical. Yet their use led to charges of following unethical practices and to a seven year worldwide boycott of all Nestle products.
The basis for the complaints was misuse of the products. Many of the women who received samples were poor. When they returned home to their villages, they were unable to buy sufficient quantities of the formula. In the meantime their own breast milk had dried up. Hence, they stretched formula, diluting it to make it go further. In addition, they often used local, unsterilized water to mix the formula. The overall result was an increase in infant malnutrition and mortality.
Critics blamed the manufacturers of the infant formula, and particularly the aggressive marketing techniques. Specifically, critics charged that the ads for the product frequently showed white women feeding their infants the milk formula from a bottle, thereby sending the message that to be up-to-date, modern mothers should bottle-feed rather than breast-feed their babies. Breast- feeding, however, was preferable from a health standpoint. If the mother had a sufficient supply of breast milk, the critics maintained, she would not have to worry about buying or stretching the formula, or about contamination from water. At the same time, they said, they could transmit some of her antibodies to help the infant fight disease rather than introduce disease with the contaminated water.
Furthermore mother who were given, free samples immediately after giving birth were more inclined to bottle-feed than to breast-feed their newborns. The company knew that the mother's milk would dry up and that the mothers would be dependent on the formula when they returned home. In addition, the representatives of the company who went through the wards giving out the samples wore white, and so the mothers easily mistook them for nurses. Therefore, they were more prone to accept and use the formula than if the distributors were easily identified as salespeople.
Because the techniques the distributors used were not illegal, a group that called itself INFACT organized a boycott to apply moral pressure on the infant milk formula companies to change their marketing techniques. The group targeted the Nestle Corporation, a worldwide corporation based on in Switzerland. INFACT asked the consumers refrain from buying any Nestle products until the company changed its practices. The boycott, which lasted seven years, ended in January 1984. In the meantime, the World Health Organization developed a Code of Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes, which Nestle and other companies agreed to follow.
Assuming that the above information is accurate, did Nestle have a moral obligation to change its practices? Since its practices were legal and accepted in developed countries, why could it not follow them in less developed countries? Did American consumers have any obligation to join the boycott?