Child labor in palm oil industry tied to Girl Scout cookies

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Olivia Chaffin, a Girl Scout in rural Tennessee, was a top cookie seller in her troop when she first heard rainforests were being destroyed to make way for ever-expanding palm oil plantations. Ima is among the estimated tens of thousands of children working alongside their parents in Indonesia and Malaysia, which supply 85% of the world’s most consumed vegetable oil. The AP used U.S. Customs records and the most recently published data from producers, traders and buyers to trace the fruits of their labor from the processing mills where palm kernels were crushed to the supply chains of many popular kids’ cereals, candies and ice creams sold by Nestle, Unilever, Kellogg’s, PepsiCo and many other leading food companies, including Ferrero – one of the two makers of Girl Scout cookies.

A child carries palm kernels collected from the ground across a creek at a palm oil plantation in Sumatra, Indonesia, Monday, Nov. 13, 2017. Child labor has long been a dark stain on the $65 billion global palm oil industry. Though often denied or minimized as kids simply helping their families on weekends or after school, it has been identified as a problem by human rights groups, the United Nations and the U.S. government.

Olivia Chaffin, center, walks in the woods with her parents, Doug, left, and Kim Chaffin, as Olivia works on a Girl Scout photography merit badge in Jonesborough, Tenn., on Sunday, Nov. 1, 2020. Olivia, who stopped selling Girl Scout cookies because they contain palm oil says,"I'm not just some little girl who can't do anything about this. … Children can make change in the world. And we're going to.

Olivia Chaffin, 14, stands for a portrait with her Girl Scout sash in Jonesborough, Tenn., on Sunday, Nov. 1, 2020. Olivia is asking Girl Scouts across the country to band with her and stop selling cookies, saying,"The cookies deceive a lot of people. They think it's sustainable, but it isn't." Ima, a girl who works informally to help her parents in a palm oil plantation, poses for a portrait in Sumatra, Indonesia, Sunday, Sept. 9, 2018.

A child carries palm kernels collected from the ground at a palm oil plantation in Sumatra, Indonesia, Monday, Nov. 13, 2017. Students of a boarding school rest in their dormitory in North Kalimantan, Indonesia, on Tuesday, April 9, 2019. Some palm oil workers who work illegally in Malaysia send their children to the school in this transit town because they have no access to education in Malaysia due to their parents' employment status.

Olivia Chaffin, a Girl Scout in rural Tennessee, was a top cookie seller in her troop when she first heard rainforests were being destroyed to make way for ever-expanding palm oil plantations. On one of those plantations a continent away, 10-year-old Ima helped harvest the fruit that makes its way into a dizzying array of products sold by leading Western food and cosmetics brands.

Olivia, who earned a badge for selling more than 600 boxes of cookies, had spotted palm oil as an ingredient on the back of one of her packages but was relieved to see a green tree logo next to the words “certified sustainable.” She assumed that meant her Thin Mints and Tagalongs weren’t harming rainforests, orangutans or those harvesting the orange-red palm fruit.

 

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