U.S. Girl Scouts said Wednesday that child labor has no place in their iconic cookies and called on the two companies that cook them to act quickly to address possible palm oil-related abuses on their chains. supply.
The comments were tweeted to Associated Press reporters who published an investigation On Tuesday, Girl Scout cookies and supply chains from other well-known food brands are linked to about tens of thousands of children who often work unpaid for long hours in dangerous conditions to help harvest palm fruits on Indonesian plantations and Malaysia.
“Child labor has no place in the production of Girl Scout cookies,” they posted on Twitter. “Our investment in the development of our world’s youth should not be facilitated by the underdevelopment of some.”
The Girl Scouts also referred to a global non-profit organization to which they belong, called the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, which promotes ethical production, including the treatment of workers, by writing: “If certain suppliers they do not follow ethical practices, we expect our bakers and RSPO to take action quickly to rectify these exceptions. “
The Girl Scouts had not responded to the PA’s repeated requests to comment on findings prior to Tuesday’s story, which found that many children working in the palm oil industry do not have access to school or health care and that some never learn to read or write. The story told how other people live in fear of being dragged by police and thrown into detention centers because they were born on plantations of illegally working parents and how girls are vulnerable to sexual abuse.
Reporters traced child labor to the supply chain of one of the Girl Scout cookie bakers, Little Brownie Bakers, owned by Italian confectionery brand Ferrero, who did not comment on the findings. The other baker and its parent company, Canada-based Weston Foods, did not provide any details about its supply chain, citing ownership reasons. They both said they were committed to obtaining sustainable palm oil.