A 2018 report published by Mongabay and Reporter Brasil detailed how Brazil’s labor ministry had rescued 33 coffee workers from two farms, who said they had substandard housing and were not paid fairly. At least one of the farms held an “ethically sourced” C.A.F.E. certification.
Then in 2019, Mongabay reported that another coffee farm there, which also operates with this quality certification, was similarly found guilty of using forced labor. That farm was added to Brazil’s “dirty list” of employers caught exploiting labor, which spurred international coffee companies to stop purchasing from those operations.
The main American coffee company — which has more than 40,000 stores worldwide, including 18,000 in the U.S. — claimed that it took action to remedy the labor abuse problem, but its critics like the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR) have since stated that it’s “anything but the ethical and responsible corporation that it pretends to be.”
