Nestlé and Jacobs Douwe Egberts admitted that their companies may have been using coffee beans cultivated by slave laborers in Brazilian plantations.

The firms both said that they don't know the names of the plantations that supply their coffee because they purchase the beans from middlemen and exporters that belong in a "complicated supply chain," according to the media and research center DanWatch, as reported by the Guardian. Nestlé and Jacobs Douwe Egberts, two of the world's largest coffee companies, account for 39 percent of the world's coffee market.

Investigations Conducted

For seven months, DanWatch examined the coffee industry by talking to farmers, experts and trade unions. They also investigated plantations with Brazilian officials, the Guardian reported.

Plantations that supply products to the two companies may have been using people to work with little or no pay. According to DanWatch, the workers are forced to drink the same water that animals drink. They face "debt bondage, non-existent work contracts, exposure to deadly pesticides, lack of protective equipment" and poor housing accommodations, the news outlet listed. Such working conditions go against Brazilian and international law as well as the companies' ethical codes they require from suppliers.

DanWatch claimed that human rights abuses are prevalent across Brazil's productive coffee industry, the Guardian further reported. Hundreds of workers are liberated from slave labor annually.

In 1995, Brazil's Labor Ministry launched a Special Mobile Enforcement Group that works alongside prosecutors and police to identify farms, companies and construction sites that use slave workers, Reuters reported. Government figures revealed that about 50,000 people have been rescued from forced labor since then.

Taking Action

Nestlé and Jacobs Douwe Egberts said that they don't buy coffee beans from blacklisted plantations that practice slave labor. However, both companies can't be sure that slavery-like working environments don't take place in their supply chain, the Guardian wrote.

Nestlé confirmed to DanWatch that it bought beans from two plantations where slave laborers were rescued by Brazilian authorities last summer. Afterward, the Swiss company suspended deliveries from the said plantations, the news outlet added.

"We do not tolerate violations of labor rights and have strongly maintained that forced labor has no place in our supply chain," Nestlé said in a statement quoted by the Guardian. "Unfortunately, forced labor is an endemic problem in Brazil and no company sourcing coffee and other ingredients from the country can fully guarantee that it has completely removed forced labor practices or human rights abuses from its supply chain,"

Jacobs Douwe Egberts promised their full cooperation with authorities, organizations and the whole coffee supply chain to improve the working conditions of coffee farmers globally, the Guardian added.