Mongabay reporting drives campaign to clean up coffee supply chains

8 Dec 2025

A 2018 report published by Mongabay detailed how Brazil’s labor ministry had rescued 33 coffee workers from two farms, who said they had substandard housing were not paid fairly. At least one of the farms held an “ethically sourced” C.A.F.E. certification, a label that was owned in part by the giant coffee company Starbucks.

Then in 2019, Mongabay reported that another coffee farm there, which also received a quality certification from Starbucks and Nestlé-controlled brand Nespresso, was similarly found to employ forced labor, and was added to Brazil’s “dirty list” of employers caught exploiting labor, which spurred the companies to stop purchasing from those farms.

These reports and others grabbed the attention of Etelle Higonnet, a sustainable supply chains expert who had for years tracked the planetary costs of commodities like coffee, palm oil, and chocolate. She was already aware of environmental problems — like how coffee is the sixth greatest driver of tropical deforestation — but was surprised to find out that human rights abuses like forced labor and child labor are also widespread in Brazil and across the entire coffee industry.

“Mongabay is how I learned about the problem,” said Higonnet. “I was so shocked that I started researching and googling the issue. Then I developed a kind of treasure trove of all the evidence ever collected about slavery in Brazilian coffee.” After looking into it so deeply, she told Mongabay that slavery even appeared to be “a business model for many companies.”

The other issue she learned of via the team’s reporting was the insect apocalypse and how the coffee industry’s rampant use of pesticides was helping to cause that, as she recently told Mongabay’s podcast.

Using these reports, plus solutions that Mongabay has also published — including how coffee can be effectively grown in sustainable agroforestry systems — she founded Coffee Watch in 2024, which tackles the many social and environmental costs of coffee, and which is already having a large potential impact on the industry.

Impact

Banner image: Workers sorting coffee beans. Photo courtesy of Jo-Anne McArthur.
Workers sorting coffee beans. Photo courtesy of Jo-Anne McArthur.

Referencing Mongabay’s reporting and other sources, Coffee Watch filed a petition in April 2025 under Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to stop the import of coffee produced with slave labor in Brazil. “These companies have knowingly benefited from the use of forced labor,” the document states in naming numerous popular coffee brands and national restaurant chains.

As of December 2025, Higonnet has had numerous written exchanges and video calls with CBP, which indicated the submission is well argued and which then asked for additional information about Brazil’s coffee supply chain, which Coffee Watch is now preparing in order to bolster its submission.

If CBP accepts the “307 petition” and the agency decides that it has a reasonable suspicion that forced labor was used in the manufacturing or production of Brazilian coffee entering the U.S. supply chain, it can issue a Withhold Release Order (WRO). This order would allow CBP to detain the products in question at all U.S. ports of entry, unless importers can prove the absence of forced labor in their product’s supply chain.

This action by Coffee Watch, directly prompted and supported by Mongabay’s independent reporting, opened a path toward ending human rights abuses by this industry in Brazil and perhaps more widely, as CBP’s staff is now much more aware of this thorny problem associated with the popular commodity’s global supply chains.

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Banner image: A cup of coffee on a tree stump, evoking how this popular commodity is the number six driver of tropical deforestation. Image courtesy of cocoparisiene via Pixabay.