Children's Book Prize Winner Refuses Nestle Cheque

I just stumbled across this Article about Sean Taylor, who won the Gold Medal in the Nestlé Children's Book Prize, under-5 category, for his book When a Monster is Born.

Taylor decided not to accept the prize money from Nestle, because of their record of aggressive marketing of baby foods, which contributes to the unnecessary death and suffering of infants around the world.

Taylor wrote a letter refusing the prize, saying (bolding mine)

...it is my view that their interpretation of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes sets up the risk that profit is put before infant health. And, in addition, it seems that the actions of some of their employees on the ground are inconsistent with company policy as set out in the Head Office.

For these reasons I do not feel that Nestlé are the most appropriate sponsors for this major children’s book prize.

Nestle has also failed to answer reports on child slavery in its cocoa production.
Well, I applaud Taylor's decision, and I wonder if maybe accepting the prize but publicly donating the money to Baby Milk Action might have been a better use?

Reason #451,986 Why We Don't Live in Israel

I just happened along this interesting little article, Osem Recalls Snacks With Lead-Tainted Toy Jewelry in the English version of Haaretz; one of the biggest newspapers in Israel.

The jist of it, is that Osem, Israel's largest snack-food company, made a promotion of putting a little plastic necklace in packets of their salty snack foods, Bissli, Bamba and Dubonim. Turns out (like pretty much everything that comes out of China lately), the necklaces contain 3.5 times the acceptable levels of lead.

The Israeli Ministry of Health standards director said "The danger is not immediate, like electrocution, but there is clear danger".
Yep; clear danger. Lead poisoning, in fact.

Of course, the CEO of Osem, Aviezer Kaplan didn't want to do a recall, saying "there was no point". In fact, "All the experts we checked with say there is no danger to public health."

How convenient that the "experts" the company checked with (and which experts might they be, I'd like to know) say there is no danger to public health. Yet, the Ministry of Health (whom would count pretty high amongst the list of experts, and are easily found in the Israel Yellow Pages, not to mention in direct contact with Aviezer Kaplan) gave a direct order that they toys be recalled.

So basically, though Osem has been ordered to recall the snacks, they're still on the shelves. All that Osem has so far done is run a small newspaper ad.

and yes, this is more-or-less acceptable to Israeli standards.

Seems that while the CEO of Osem may or may not care about the health of children in Israel (who happen to be his best customers), he is much more afraid of his boss, Nestle, who owns 50.1% of the company. Nestle, as we all know, don't have any issue with killing children in third world countries.