Nestle Responds to Child Labor Violations

July 4, 2012

Who made that Kit Kat bar you’re eating? There is a good chance that a child worked on a cocoa farm in the Ivory Coast that provided the cocoa supply used to make your Kit Kat bar. Those are the findings from the Fair Labor Association (FLA), which conducted an audit (per Nestle’s request) of the Nestle cocoa supply chain.

The FLA study reported that 80% of Nestle’s cocoa comes from channels that are “opaque” in terms of the transparency of their labor processes and practices. In a 2008 government survey in the Ivory Coast, it was found that 89% of the country’s children were involved in cocoa production in some way. According to Bloomberg, Nestle purchases 10% of the world’s cocoa supply, and more than one-third of that comes from the Ivory Coast.

Nestle is the first food company to join the FLA, and the company claims to be taking the numerous child labor violations discovered in the report seriously. The company reports that it will pursue each of the 11 recommendations that the FLA made in the report, including increased monitoring of cocoa farms, building and improving schools, and more. The infographic below provides some of the report statistics as well as the “Nestle Plan” projections.

Click the image below to view the infographic at full size.

Nestle’s zero tolerance for child labor commitment is an important one that will take years to roll out. However, demonstrating its corporate responsibility is a positive branding story that might help Nestle navigate negative publicity related to child labor more successfully in the short- and long-term.

What do you think? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

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Susan Gunelius

President & CEO at KeySplash Creative, Inc.

Susan Gunelius is the author of multiple marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and blogging books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, a leading blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com, a featured writer for Forbes.com, and the Guide to Blogging for About.com. Additionally, her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, FoxBusiness.com, WashingtonPost.com, TheStreet.com, SmartMoney.com, TodayShow.com, BusinessWeek.com, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Small Business, and more. She has nearly 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Susan also appears at in-person and virtual events where she speaks about marketing, branding, social media, and more (visit www.SusanGunelius.com for more information). You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.