How You Contribute To Human Trafficking

In what is the 150th anniversary of the founding of Nestle (Six Swiss Stock Exchange: NESN), the mammoth worldwide corporation finds itself facing civil proceedings for using human trafficked child labor in the African republic of Ivory Coast.

Founded in Switzerland in 1866 by Henri Nestle, a German-born pharmacist, the now household name’s first product was an infant cereal. Since that time, Nestle has expanded into consumer foods such as chocolate, coffee, bottled water, prepackaged frozen foods, and dairy, as well as expanding its cereal line and baby products, adding pet foods, and established its own extensive science division. In this regard, Nestle has to be considered a success on par with any of the world’s top corporations.

The cocoa industry is fraught with human rights violations wherever it is a driving force of an economy. The world demand for chocolate is not unlike that of diamonds in that the end consumer cares little for how the coveted product ends up in their hands. The difference being that now, the disparaging moniker of ‘blood diamond’ has forced socially aware consumers to look a bit closer at the source of the raw product so they can feel better about their purchase. The cocoa industry has yet to find a recognizable way to make this happen, although there exists a voluntary program in which manufacturers can participate.

The majority of cocoa’s human rights violations stem from the use of forced child labor, and it would be unfair to label Nestle as the sole contributor to the conditions under which these destitute agricultural workers find themselves.

What is most fascinating about the civil proceedings against Nestle in this particular circumstance is that Nestle is being sued by migrant workers from Mali who worked on a plantation in Ivory Coast supplying cocoa to Nestle, and that the suit was filed in the United States.

The original suit was filed in the United States in 2005 on behalf of three Mali plaintiffs who state they were trafficked from their homeland to Cote d’Ivorie (Ivory Coast) to work as slaves on a cocoa plantation. The suit names Nestle, ADM, and Cargill as defendants, all of which used the plantation as a supplier. Nestle does not own any cocoa plantations.

Through delays, filings, and proceedings, the suit wrangled its way to a January 2016 ruling by the United States Supreme Court to decline hearing an appeal by the defendants to throw out the case. The three corporate defendants had relied on the 1789 Alien Tort Statute which supposedly covers alleged violations on American soil, and that has been cited successfully in thwarting similar lawsuits against other defendants in the past. The Supreme Court ruling means this case will continue in lower courts.

Nestle and the other defendants in this case emphatically deny using slave labor of any kind and claim their internal audit procedures weed out unscrupulous suppliers who may be so tempted. In going a step further, a Nestle spokesperson stressed that it respects and follows international laws and that using forced child labor goes against everything Nestle stands for.

Still, one cannot escape the prevailing and troublesome existence of forced child labor worldwide. It lives not only in Africa, and not only within the cocoa industry. It flourishes because (largely) western consumers demand cheaper consumer goods on which to spend money they think they have, and without having to directly suffer the consequences of their insistence.