23 Jun Nestlé to Drop Fairtrade Cocoa for KitKat
This is not good news, so we’ll get straight to it. After a decade of sourcing cocoa and sugar for KitKat in the UK and Ireland, Nestlé have informed Fairtrade they no longer plan to buy Fairtrade cocoa and sugar from some of the world’s most vulnerable small scale farmers.
For those cocoa and sugar farmers, the timing is terrible. With the global health and economic crisis threatening their future, co-operatives representing 27,000 farmers now face losing almost £2m of Fairtrade Premium each year, along with the security and power Fairtrade has offered over the past ten years.
The affected farmers have spoken out about wishing to remain Fairtrade, and the Fairtrade Foundation has released a plea to Nestlé on their website which also contains a link to a powerful letter from the Ivorian Fair Trade Network explaining why this is such a damaging decision.
Please show your support, sign the petition set up on Change.org.
Addendum (30/07/2020)
We’ve received many enquiries from people asking how they might contact Nestlé directly to voice their concerns, however we’ve been informed that we are not allowed to share the email addresses of any Nestlé contacts which aren’t in the public domain.
In order to contact Nestlé, some of our campaigners have chosen to write to the CEO, and have used a Google search to find their email address. Others have submitted questions through Nestlé’s customer services and enquiries channels on their website, such as this one:
https://www.nestle.co.uk/en-gb/ask-nestle/products-brands/answers/kitkat-moves-rainforest-alliance
If using that route, it’s best to ask questions to unpick the claims Nestlé have made there, so that they can’t just reply with the usual stock response.
Lastly, for those on Twitter, it’s possible to ask questions publicly that way.