MILAN – Nestlé and Jacobs Douwe Egberts (Jde), the two leading coffee companies in the world, admit that beans bought from Brazilian plantations may have been grown using slave labour because they do not know the names of all the plantations that supply them.
This followed an investigation from the Danwatch media and research centre which confronted the two companies with the possible infraction.
“Two coffee giants [together account for 39 percent of the global coffee market] admit that coffee from plantations, where working conditions resembled slavery according to the Brazilian authorities, may have ended up in their supply chains,” the Denmark-based group said, adding the companies often bought beans from middlemen and exporters in a muddled supply chain.
Nestle and Jacobs Douwe Egberts told the Guardian they took DanWatch’s allegations seriously and were very concerned by the findings.
“We do not tolerate violations of labor rights and have strongly maintained that forced labor has no place in our supply chain,” Nestle said in a written statement to Danwatch.
“Unfortunately, forced labor is an endemic problem in Brazil and no company sourcing coffee and other ingredients from the country can fully guarantee that it has completely removed forced labor practices or human rights abuses from its supply chain.”
