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This article is about Mars. But in 2021, Nestle and Cargill were involved in a Supreme Court case, where it was decided that the Alien Torts act could not used
by abeppu 3y ago
This article is about Mars. But in 2021, Nestle and Cargill were involved in a Supreme Court case, where it was decided that the Alien Torts act could not used to bring suit by plaintiff who allege they were child slaves, trafficked from Mali to the Ivory Coast, forced to work, beaten, threatened, and not paid. The legal argument was not "we don't have child slave labor in our supply chain, even in areas where we are the only buyers" but just "irrespective of whether we're buying the products of child slave labor, we cannot be sued for it." My belief now is that most cocoa from the large, cheap sources is not produced with ethical labor.
- gruez 3y ago>My belief now is that most cocoa from the large, cheap sources is not produced with ethical labor. Your comment unhelpfully frames the issue as a dichotomy between "100% ethical labor" and "everything else", where "everything else" could mean anywhere between 0.01% unethical labor to 100% unethical labor. As a chocolate maker that's inevitably going to have unethical labor in the supply chain, the best legal strategy is to head off all claims by establishing a precedent that you're not responsible, rather than trying to quash each individual accusation of unethical labor.
- abeppu 3y agoSure, there's a spectrum. Maybe you think union busting or the tipped minimum wage are also ethical concerns. But forced labor with trafficked children has to be at one end of the spectrum that has to fall into any definition of unethical labor. And yeah I think even a little child slavery is a problem.