I've just finished reading Mark Thomas' book Belching Out The Devil. I've been reading it on and off for about a year, but yesterday, in the bath (where i do my very best reading), i finished it.
It took just 2 chapters for me to decide to give up Coca-Cola products. Well, 2 chapters and a quick scan of the end of the book to check that it didn't finish with the lines "...and that's how Coke made the shift to becoming the ethical corporate role model we see today". It didn't.
The book is Mark's personal account of his travels around the world - Columbia, India, Mexico, Turkey, Ireland, El Salvador, England and USA - as he follows leads about Coke's exploitation of its workers and the communities in which it bases its production. His journey takes in, amongst other things:
- Murders of workers looking to unionise by para-militaries who understand that Coke will move operations elsewhere if unions get off the ground in Columbia.
- Child workers harvesting sugar in cane fields.
- Coke's water use depriving communities and villages of water for drinking and farming.
- Protection racket tactics used by Coke sales reps on shopkeepers attempting to sell other cola products.
Do check out and get hold of Belching Out The Devil, it is very compelling and well researched (although, infuriatingly, all his footnotes are at the back of the book), as well as being very moving and funny.
2 comments:
Read these posts backwards. Very interesting points, which do make me want to read the book, so I shall. Not a huge fan of coke as it stands, anyway, but I like Thomas's writing. His book on the arms trade makes you absolutely bewildered at the things people get away with once money is on the table.
Read 'em backwards eh? How did that work for you? I can't imagine you're alone in doing that.
I do like Thomas a lot! I'm working on a series about peace and am looking to include some of his arms trade episode of the Mark Thomas Project. He went to Bretton you know.
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