Detail of a recently opened cocoa pod in Asikasu on Dec. 19, 2020.
Cristina Aldehuela | Afp | Getty Images
Candy giant Mars said it goals to finish the usage of child labor in its supply chain after CBS News reported that children in Ghana are harvesting the cocoa that finds its way into the corporate’s M&M’s and Snickers.
For greater than twenty years, the world’s largest chocolate makers have been pledging to eliminate — or at the very least reduce their reliance on — child labor. But those self same corporations have blown past industry-imposed deadlines to scrub up their supply chains.
For its part, Mars’ latest deadline to finish child labor in its supply chain is 2025. The corporate said greater than 65% of its West African cocoa supply chain has already achieved compliance.
Nevertheless, CBS News reported that Mars is further away from reaching that goal than it publicly projects. The news outlet said field supervisors from small subsistence farms frequently lied on their paperwork, saying children were attending school fairly than working in cocoa fields, and alleged the businesses never tried to confirm that information.
“Mars unequivocally condemns the usage of child labor. It has no place in our supply chain, and we’re fully committed to helping to eradicate it,” the candy maker said in an announcement to CNBC.
The corporate also said it’s “urgently investigating” the claims made by CBS and is ready to take “appropriate motion” against any supplier not in compliance with its code of conduct.
The report compounds the problems Mars faces related to child labor. A lawsuit filed within the Superior Court of the District of Washington on Wednesday targets Mars, agricultural giant Cargill and Toblerone maker Mondelez, accusing the businesses and their leaders of negligent supervision and consumer fraud tied to child labor of their supply chains.
The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed an analogous lawsuit in 2021 that aimed to carry Nestle USA and Cargill answerable for child slavery on African farms that supplied their cocoa.
Read the total statement from Mars below:
Mars unequivocally condemns the usage of child labor. It has no place in our supply chain, and we’re fully committed to helping to eradicate it.
Despite our repeated requests, CBS didn’t provide specific details of their investigation to Mars ahead of their broadcast, which meant that we were unable to look into the allegations raised of their program. We are actually urgently investigating the claims made in the published and are able to take appropriate motion against any supplier found to not have met our expectations specified by our Supplier Code of Conduct.
Our cocoa suppliers in Ghana have agreed to stick to our robust Supplier Code of Conduct and we now have also been clear that they should have a Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation System (CLMRS) in place by 2025 that complies with the industry leading International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) standard. Over 65% of our cocoa supply in West Africa is already covered by CLMRS which is implemented by our suppliers on the bottom, with audits conducted by certification bodies as a part of Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade certification requirements.
We’ve a strong Protecting Children Motion Plan in place that’s backed by a big financial investment totaling tons of of tens of millions of dollars over the approaching years. We’re also transparent in saying that we all know that more must be done and we proceed to work diligently with parties across the cocoa sector to further help advance respect for human rights within the cocoa supply chain.
Read the total CBS News report here.
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