As if the lawsuit over child labor on the Ivory Coast wasn’t controversial enough, Nestle, one of the most well-known household brands in the world has openly admitted that their operations in Thailand have been fueled by slave labor. The worst part about this all is that they have been aware of this for awhile now. The official statement they made is that there is no possible way they could have prevented the slave trade from taking place. This contradicts everything that Nestle has claimed to stand for.

Over the last few years, Nestle has made it their mission to supply third-world countries with food and water, but they have proven that they want the opposite.

India sued Nestle for over $100 million because the noodles that were sent to the country contained high amounts of lead. They also built their water bottle manufacturing plant on an American Indian reservation so that they did not have to adhere to government restrictions during droughts and so they do not have to report how much water they are using. They have been also sued for bottling water that they gained from drought stricken areas. Earlier before this at the onset of the drought, the question of whether or not to keep bottling water during the drought came up.

“Absolutely not, I would increase it if I could” CEO Tim Brown said.

Their blatant methods of extorting native people has been going on far too long to be left unpunished. How long are we going to extort people off of the promise of false hope? This imperialistic way of business has been going on for centuries, but this should be the century it ends.

I tend to mudsling a lot in my opinions, but I feel like that we have to stop the mudslinging and scrutiny and learn from this. Countries should have more restrictions on foreign industry.