Corporate Culture: Nestles Claims Patent for Ancient Medicinal Plant

Nigella Sativa -- more commonly known as Fennel Flower -- has been used as a cure-all remedy for over a thousand years. It treats everything from vomiting to fevers to skin diseases, and has been widely available in impoverished communities across the Middle East and Asia.

Nigella Sativa -- more commonly known as Fennel Flower

But now Nestles is claiming to own it, and filing patent claims around the world to try and take control over the natural cure of the fennel flower and turn it into a costly private drug.

Tell Nestles: Stop trying to patent a natural cure!

In a paper published last year, Nestlé scientists claimed to “discover” what much of the world has known for millennia: that nigella sativa extract could be used for “nutritional interventions in humans with food allergy”.

But instead of creating an artificial substitute, or fighting to make sure the remedy was widely available, Nestles is attempting to create a nigella sativa monopoly and gain the ability to sue anyone using it without Nestles permission. Nestlé has filed patent applications -- which are currently pending -- around the world.

Prior to Nestles' outlandish patent claim, researchers in developing nations such as Egypt and Pakistan had already published studies on the same curative powers Nestles is claiming as its own. And Nestles has done this before -- in 2011, it tried to claim credit for using cow’s milk as a laxative, despite the fact that such knowledge had been in Indian medical texts for a thousand years.

Don’t let Nestles turn a traditional cure into a corporate cash cow.

This isn't surprising, considering Nestles has a long track record of not caring about ethics. After all, this is the corporation that poisoned its milk with melamine, purchases cocoa from plantations that use child slave labor, and launched a breast milk substitute campaign in the 1970s that contributed to the suffering and deaths of thousands of babies from poor communities.

But we also know that Nestles is sensitive to public outcry, and that it's been beaten at the patent game before. If we act fast, we can put enough pressure on Nestles to get it to drop its patent plans before they harm anyone -- but if we want any chance at affecting Nestles' decision, we have to speak out now, while its patent claims are still under review.