Imperial starts joint venture with Nestlé
The company more famous for boycotts has £6.5 million deal with college
Imperial has signed a deal with the food and drink giant Nestlé to launch research into nutrition together.
The research will focus specifically on the gut’s bacterial make-up, the microbiome, and digestive metabolites’ influence on both physical and mental health.
Nestlé will invest £6.5 million in the clinical and pre-clinical studies over a five year period.
Imperial has been collaborating on research with the Swiss firm for the last decade, but this semi-formal Memorandum of Understanding commits the food and beverage multinational to provide funding for joint studies.
Nestlé’s Chief Technology Officer called Imperial “a great fit for Nestlé”, whilst Imperial President Alice Gast said the college will work with the world’s largest food company to “address pressing societal challenges like diabetes and obesity”.
Nestlé has been a target for boycotts since the 1970s over its practices surrounding advertising baby formula to women in developing countries. The corporation was accused of getting babies hooked on the expensive, and unnecessary formula and misleading mothers by dressing salespeople as nurses. This resulted in a decade long boycott and a change in marketing rules.
Recently, the company has been accused of ducking rules again, and reports from Save the Children as recently as 2013 have criticised the firm for its advertising.
In 2010 Greenpeace went after the company for its sources of palm oil – its supplier was accused of illegal deforestation and peatland clearance. In 2012 the company was accused of “failing” on its own child labour codes by an independent labour auditor, which mapped the supply chain from the company’s cocoa resources in the Ivory Coast.
The company also bought the rights to a new experimental cow’s milk allergy test for babies. The €10 million purchase is part of a move by the company into medical sciences, which, along with the Imperial deal, could see Nestlé adding pharmaceuticals to its long list of food products.
