Beans means Nestlé
 A taste of what's to come? |
Ah man, I recently found out that Nestlé is probably buying Heinz's Linda McCartney range of foods. This depresses me more than the fact that they just bought the Body Shop since I'm not all that fussed about The Body Shop anyway but the possibility that Heinz is now selling out to Nestlé has thrown me into a state of panic. Will I soon have to boycott my beloved Heinz Baked Beans? These are like a staple food at my house (I usually try to buy the organic version). What will I put with my veggie burgers and mashed potato now?
It's bad enough already since I am limited in the food I consume because I try to be an ethical consumer. For example - I wont eat veggie burgers made by Bocca (produced by Kraft, which is owned by Phillip Morris - now known as "Altria"!). It seems that all of the smaller food producers are getting bought up by a few big companies. Everything is either made by Nestlé, Kraft or Unilever these days. Thank Gaia for farmers' markets!
If you want to find out who the worst corporations are check out www.badcorp.org.
Want to be an ethical consumer? Find out where your nearest Farmers' Market is and buy as much (preferably organic) produce from there as possible. It's much better to buy locally, from the growers than to buy stuff that has travelled thousands of miles from supermarket chains.
Comments
Thanks for linking to my site, I've returned the favour. I've almost abandoned it because I've been doing loads of work for the Green Party around the elections. I'm also inundated with comment spam. You asked if I was a member of the US party, and I'm actually a member of your very own Green Party of England & Wales (unless you're Scottish/Irish). We performed best out of all of the non-mainstream parties, and now have 92 local councillors in the UK, including one in Liverpool where I live! The BNP got all of the attention on election night unfortunately, but nice people rarely get much attention from the mainstream media unfortunately. :-(
Aside from Nestle's ethics, which we are all agreed are non-existent, I can't see how the global economic community can allow a company to swallow up so much business. I'm not an expert, but fewer companies means less competition and less incentive for innovation or giving the people what they want. That is bad for everyone but the handful of Nestle shareholders.
If nobody stands up to them we'll just have to wait until the oil runs out and pulls the rug out from under their feet.
Posted by: Martin Owen | May 21, 2006 05:19 PM