Consumer Group Files Class Action Against Mondelez for Use of Forced Child Labor
A plaintiff representing a consumer advocacy group Aug. 16 filed a complaint against the company that sells products under the brand names Oreo, Toblerone and Cadbury chocolate for its use of child labor and poor environmental standards (Tim Gollogly v. Mondelez International, N.D. Ill. # 24-07368).
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The plaintiff described how, after the release of a 2022 documentary discussing child labor plantations in Ghana, one child who worked on a company plantation from age 10 to age 19 was bribed and threatened by the company to walk her statement back.
Illinois resident Tim Gollogly said in the suit that he is seeking injunctive relief, compensatory damages, punitive damages and restitution. He also argued that the company, Mondelez International, has been unjustly enriched as a result of its “false and deceptive marketing practices.”
The FTC holds that marketers are responsible for all claims “reasonably communicated” by a third-party certification, he said. “Cocoa Life” is Mondelez’s own certification, “which increases its responsibility to substantiate the claims it communicates with that seal,” he argued.
Gollogly accused Mondelez of lying that its chocolate sourcing practices are sustainable and free of forced and child labor. It noted that products such as Oreos state on their packages, by their Cocoa Life logo, that they “support a ‘vibrant’ supply chain that ‘transform[s] the livelihoods of farmers in communities.’” But “in fact the company’s supply chains are linked to farms in Ghana where children as young as 10 years old work with machetes and farmers are paid less than two euro per day,” he said.
He also said that company didn’t stand by its pledges to reduce deforestation on the continent, noting that the environmental advocacy organization Rainforest Action Network had given it an “F” grade in the fight against deforestation and human rights violations in supply chains.
“Specifically, Mondelez was called out for not ‘holding bad actors to account,’ for not having ‘proof of free, prior and informed consent,’ and for not having ‘independent verification’ of compliance with its ‘No Deforestation, No Peat and No Exploitation’ commitment,” Gollogly said.
These practices allowed Mondelez to sell more product and compete more successfully with other chocolate sellers, increasing its own profits and sales, he said.