The US Girl Scouts said Wednesday that child labor has no place in the iconic cookies and called on the two companies that bake them to act quickly to address potential abuses in their supply chains related to the palm oil.
The comments have been tweeted to Associated Press reporters who have launched an investigation On Tuesday, Girl Scout linked cookies and the supply chains of other well-known food brands with an estimated tens of thousands of children who often work unpaid for hours under dangerous conditions to help harvest palm fruit on plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia.
“Child labor has no place in Girl Scout Cookie production,” the Girl Scouts tweeted. “Our investment in the development of the youth of our world should not be facilitated by the underdevelopment of some.”
The Girl Scouts also referred to a global nonprofit to which she belongs, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, which promotes ethical production, including the treatment of employees, writing, “ If certain suppliers don’t follow ethical practices, we expect our bakers and RSPO to take swift action to rectify those exceptions. “
The Girl Scouts had not responded to repeated requests from the AP for comment on the findings ahead of Tuesday’s story, which found that many children working in the palm oil industry do not have access to adequate school or health care, and some never learn to read. or write. . The story describes how others live in fear of being arrested by the police and thrown in detention centers for having been born on plantations to parents who work illegally, and how girls are vulnerable to sexual abuse.
Reporters found child labor in the supply chain of one of the Girl Scout cookie bakers, Little Brownie Bakers, owned by Italian candy brand Ferrero, which did not comment on the findings. The other baker and parent company, Canada-based Weston Foods, did not provide supply chain details for ownership reasons. Both said they are committed to sustainable palm oil.