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Home--News
Nestle in Secret Pact with Public Universities on Nutrition
By Rema Nagarajan
Times of India
January 24, 2011
Four public-funded national universities have entered into a "confidential"
pact with Nestle, one of the biggest baby food and commercial food
companies, for nutrition awareness programmes for adolescent school-going
girls in government-run village schools.
Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India (BPNI) has written a letter
to the secretary for school education and literacy, Anshu Vaish, protesting
against "brand promotion using the public education system" and saying
that the MoU (memorandum of understanding) was a clear case of conflict
between public and corporate interests.
Nestle signed an MoU with Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) Ludhiana;
National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, Haryana; University of
Mysore in Karnataka; and the GB Pant University for Agriculture and
Technology, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand. Under the MoU, Nestle staff along
with the faculty of these universities launched a nutrition education
programme. This joint initiative was launched in April 2009 by minister
of state for rural development Agatha Sangma along with Nestle India
chairman Helio Waszyk.
The MoU signed with PAU states: "This MoU, its existence and all information
exchanged between the parties under this MoU or during the negotiations
preceding this MoU is confidential to them and may not be shared with
a third party." In keeping with this condition, PAU refused to give
information when an RTI application was filed seeking information
about the MoU and the details of the nutrition education programme.
The head of the department of nutrition in PAU, Dr J K Sangha, wrote
to Nestle seeking its opinion on the RTI application for information
and copies of documents pertaining to the MoU. In his reply dated
July 1, 2010, the senior manager of corporate affairs in Nestle, Ajay
Pal Singh Kang, wrote back stating: "We wish to inform you that all
contents of the programme being conducted jointly by PAU and Nestle
India have been specially developed by scientists and experts to be
used exclusively to carry out the set objectives of the MoU. The contents
of the programme are of commercial and confidential nature and the
disclosure of which may harm our competitive position."
Therefore, we are constrained to decline our consent for the supply
or disclosure, to any third party, of any information or document
pertaining to this joint collaboration."
"Why should a national university have to take the permission of a
private company to give information under the RTI Act? They are duty-bound
to provide the information. After all, what is so secretive about
the contents of a nutritional programme? They have sold their autonomy
and independence as a national institution to a corporate entity for
a paltry sum of Rs 2.5 lakh, the sum Nestle is paying PAU for this
project," said Dr Arun Gupta, of BPNI.
The letter to the secretary questioned how a food corporation could
use a public-funded institution for the promotion of their brand.
"We believe that such sponsorship of education of adolescent girls
who are future mothers will inevitably be biased towards the nutrition
products of the company which comprise of breast milk substitutes,
baby foods and instant snacks among others," stated the letter. BPNI
wrote another letter on the same issue to HRD minister Kapil Sibal.
So far, there has been no response from the government.
Himanshu Manglik, communications manager of Nestle, when contacted,
said that the nutrition education programme was a very good one and
that the company had nothing to hide and was willing to share the
contents of the programme with anyone who was interested.
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