Business Ethics: Nestlé Infant Formula
Summary
Nestlé was the largest worldwide food processing company, and it is selling infant formula in nationwide scale. They promoted baby infant formulas over breast feed, and the sale was popular. A large percentage of Nestlé’s market was in third world countries. Nestlé used four different ways to promote infant formulas. First of all, there were massive advertisements over television, billboards and radio station. Second, posters with photos of healthy, happy infants were distributed alone with baby books. The third, they left free samples of baby formulas in health care systems of various countries. Last, the most popular way Nestlé advertise the formula was called “milk nurses”. Nestlé send sales people to homes, dress as nurses, and sell the formulas. Those “milk nurses” gave the new mothers impression that baby formulas are the best choice for their babies, and encouraged new mothers to feed their babies with formula instead of breast feeding. As a result, there was an increase in new mothers using infant formula and a decrease in breast feeding.
Due to lack of refrigeration equipment, water purification and the shortage of knowledge, many babies started getting sick and some even died after they drank the formula.

Analysis Being a manager in the business world sometimes you have to make decisions. Most of the time, the decisions had to made between moral and business issues. Some of the decisions was good for business but are unacceptable in the non-work environment. Nestlé unfortunately was the type of business that chasing profit instead of taking concerns of innocent babies.
One of Nestlé’s issues was that there was no one stand up to point out the potential risk of the formula. Certain business researches could have been done before any products entering into the marker. Those researches should