Brands made by companies including Nestlé, Kellogg’s, Unilever, and Procter & Gamble may contain palm oil produced by children and workers sometimes paid less than $2.50 a day, a report by Amnesty International has claimed.
The charity said it found “serious human rights abuses” on five palm oil plantations in Indonesia in the supply network of a company called Wilmar, which it said also supplies Proctor & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Reckitt Benckiser, renewable science company Elevance, and processing companies AFAMSA and ADM.
The businesses have not confirmed which brands may have been made with palm oil farmed on the plantations, but among them they own a raft of household names.
Amnesty is calling on the firms to reveal whether the palm oil in brands including Magnum, Colgate toothpaste, Dove cosmetics, KitKat, and Ariel come from Wilmar’s Indonesian operation.
The report, The Great Palm Oil Scandal: Labour Abuses Behind Big Brand Names, claims to have uncovered “systematic” exploitation of workers during an investigation into sites owned by, or supplying, Wilmar, the world’s largest palm oil producer.
Amnesty International said it traced palm oil from mills supplied by the plantations to seven of the companies. Procter & Gamble and Unilever, it said, confirmed they sourced palm oil from Wilmar and Indonesia but did not confirm which refineries they sourced it from.
Amnesty said it found children as young as 8 working in sometimes "hazardous conditions" on the five plantations that it investigated.
Most of the children Amnesty identified worked after school and at weekends but some had left school in order to work full time.
One 10-year-old child said he worked six days a week for the plantation, and had left school aged 8. A 14-year-old boy said he had also dropped out of school to help his unwell father to meet targets.
The report also said the boy's two sisters, aged 12 and 10, work on the site after school, with work including carrying heavy sacks of palm fruit that weigh up to 25kg per bag.
“It is difficult to carry it, it is heavy,” the boy is quoted as saying. "I do it in the rain as well but it is difficult … My hands hurt and my body aches."
Workers were also found to be handling “highly toxic” chemicals and fertiliser meant only to be operated after specialist training. Protective equipment, the report said, was not properly maintained, leading to risks of respiratory damage and “severe injuries”.
Amnesty also said women were routinely kept on insecure contracts and that workers were subjected to complex pay systems based on targets, leading to some workers earning below the minimum wage once deductions had been made.
Many of the companies give on-pack assurances that they only use “sustainable” palm oil.
Meghna Abraham, senior investigator at Amnesty International, said there was “nothing sustainable about palm oil that is produced using child labour and forced labour".
“The abuses discovered within Wilmar’s palm oil operations are not isolated incidents but are systemic,” she said.
"Something is wrong when nine companies turning over a combined revenue of £260 billion in 2015 are unable to do anything about the atrocious treatment of palm oil workers earning a pittance."
She added: "We think it's time to make all these companies accountable. They are promising you that the palm oil is sustainable – it's time that they actually made it sustainable."
In a letter to Wilmar, Amnesty International accused the company of having failed to “meet its responsibility to respect human rights".
Amnesty said it had also asked each company to confirm whether a list of their consumer products came from Wilmar’s Indonesian operations.
BuzzFeed News reached out to all companies named in the report and asked them to respond to the allegations.
Wilmar said that before Amnesty approached the company it had already been “made aware of the issues raised” and had “immediately embarked on an internal assessment".
A spokesperson shared its response letter, sent to Amnesty International, in which it says the issues raised were “systemic challenges shared by the industry” and that it was “committed” to addressing them.
It also shared the results of its internal assessment, dated September 2016, with BuzzFeed News. The assessment lists “unfair payment of wages, child labour, discrimination of women and temporary workers, and handling of hazardous chemicals without personal protective equipment” as issues it is monitoring, with changes being implemented.
In a statement, Unilever said it welcomed the report and that it agreed “much more” needed to be done to tackle “these deeply concerning social issues".
Colgate-Palmolive said it prohibited discrimination and child and forced labour in its supply chain and that it was “concerned” about the allegations.
“We work with suppliers to remediate unacceptable practices and, as we have done in the past, will terminate any supplier that fails to address labor and human rights concerns,” a spokesman added.
Kellogg’s said it was “committed to respecting human rights”, adding that where it found supply chain violations it would work with suppliers towards “corrective actions” and would “remove” those suppliers if concerns were not “adequately addressed".
A spokesman for Nestlé said Wilmar supplied 10% of its palm oil. “We will investigate allegations related to our purchasing of palm oil, along with our suppliers,” he said.
He added that the company worked to “improve transparency, traceability and supplier behaviour in the palm oil industry” and had “processes in place to assess where the risk of labour or human rights violations exist in our supply chain”, which it was “taking action to address” these.
“Where our suppliers fail to meet the provisions in our Supplier Code, including on labour rights, we will suspend them,” he said.
ADM said: “We have committed to ... no exploitation in [our] palm supply chain. We work with our suppliers to ensure these policies are strictly followed. In the event that our suppliers do not comply with our protocols, we are committed to working with them to resolve such issues.
"We look forward to working with Amnesty International and other organisations to discuss and address the concerns it has raised.”
Procter & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser, Elevance, and AFAMSA did not respond to requests for comment.