Today, the world’s leading food and drinks company, Nestlé, had Greenpeace’s new video removed from YouTube. This is an apparent attempt to silence the truth that some of its most popular brands use palm oil from destroyed rainforests and peatlands.
We’ve now stuck the video on Vimeo. So, without further ado, here’s the video that doth offend Nestlé. Can you work out why?
Have a break? from Greenpeace UK on Vimeo.
In response to the pull-down, we wrote this open letter to Nestlé’s PR department.
Dear Nestlé PR department,
Hey! How are you doing? I know that when we highlight the damaging effect your business is having on the Indonesian rainforests, it must be a bit annoying. I hope you understand that we’re only trying to get your attention because using unsustainable palm oil in your products is such a very bad thing. You see, we just can’t afford to let the Indonesian rainforests go up in smoke to provide land for palm oil plantations.
When you told us that you cared about the problem just as much as us, sure, we had a few reservations.
For one thing, although you said that you’d no longer buy direct from Sinar Mas – the suppliers of unsustainable palm oil from deforested areas of Indonesian rainforest – you made no such promises about buying from people like Cargill, who buy palm oil from the same company. Really, if you’re buying the same stuff, but via an intermediary, and you’re not able to rule out supplies from APP, that’s not enough progress is it?
I started to wonder if you really cared about this issue in the way that you claim to.
But I guess what made me really wonder about whether you really cared was when you had our video pulled off youtube, citing ‘copyright infringement’. Now, I’m not a lawyer, but I reckon that maybe the terms ‘fair use’ and ‘parody’ might be relevant here.
Hmm, actually now that I think about it for a moment, I don’t think you really care about copyright at all. I think you just wanted to stop people seeing the video! That’s pretty lame. Seriously, censorship is just so … last century.
I might also point out that we’ve already been flooded with offers to host the video elsewhere, and that your move has generated even more interest in the issue on the blogosphere and on Twitter.
To me, trying to censor our criticism doesn’t seem like such a smart PR move. But then, what do I know!
Anyway, hope you’re all well!
All the best,
Christian
GPUK Web Team
