Promotional products firms that supply and distribute M&Ms, Snickers and other chocolates from Mars may have to reconsider doing business with the candy maker if they’re truly committed to corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Child Labor Violations

CBS News aired a report last week that found children – as young as 5 years old – in Ghana harvesting cocoa that ends up in Mars’ products.

Although Mars claims that over 65% of its cocoa supply in West Africa has a “robust child and forced labor monitoring and remediation system” designed to keep children in schools and off plantations, CBS News’ footage showed children enduring the blistering heat while wielding machetes in the cocoa fields.

  • A whistleblower sent CBS News copies of lists of the children supposedly attending school, but a longtime cocoa field supervisor told the news outlet that he has “made up lists before” and that “almost every data is cooked…or isn’t correct.”

 

  • The supervisor added that Mars has never verified the data.

Elizabeth Wimbush, PPAI’s director of corporate responsibility and sustainability, said the exposé highlights the need for a “thoroughly vetted supply chain – regardless of your company type or size – enabling you to make an educated risk analysis.”  

“You should hold your suppliers accountable to a standard that you find acceptable, through a code of conduct or external audits, and have an offboarding plan in the event that they don’t live up to it,” Wimbush says.

In a statement to CNBC, Mars said that it “unequivocally condemns the use of child labor. It has no place in our supply chain, and we’re fully committed to helping to eradicate it.” The company also said that it’s “urgently investigating the claims made in the broadcast” and is ready to “take appropriate action against any supplier” violating Mars’ Supplier Code of Conduct.

  • Mars added that its suppliers must have child labor monitoring and remediation system in place by 2025.


Legal Challenge

On the same day as CBS News’ report, a proposed class-action lawsuit was filed against Mars and fellow food producing giants Cargill and Mondelez, alleging that the companies’ leaders “have done little to address the ongoing and pervasive use of child workers performing the worst forms of child labor on their sourcing plantations.”

  • In 2001, Mars, Hershey, Nestle and other chocolate producers signed the “Harkin Engel Protocol,” which provided a time-bound process for eliminating the use of child labor in cocoa growing and harvesting.

Filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, the lawsuit accuses the companies of consumer fraud, negligent supervision, unjust enrichment and theft, Star Tribune reported.

“Forced child labor is unacceptable,” Cargill, the largest privately held company in the United States, told Star Tribune. “We take these allegations very seriously. We just learned of the filing and cannot comment on the specifics of the case.”

An initial hearing for the proposed class-action lawsuit has been set for March 1, 2024.