"Luxury perfumes linked to child labour, BBC finds", May 28 2024

Children have picked ingredients used by suppliers to two major beauty companies, the BBC can reveal.

A BBC investigation into last summer's perfume supply chains found jasmine used by Lancôme and Aerin Beauty's suppliers was picked by minors.

All the luxury perfume brands claim to have zero tolerance on child labour.

L'Oréal, Lancôme's owner, said it was committed to respecting human rights. Estée Lauder, Aerin Beauty's owner, said it had contacted its suppliers.

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Industry insiders told us the handful of companies that own many luxury brands are squeezing budgets, resulting in very low pay. Egyptian jasmine pickers say this forces them to involve their children.

And we have discovered the auditing systems the perfume industry uses to check on supply chains are deeply flawed.

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Once the jasmine has been picked and weighed, it is transferred via collection points to one of several local factories which extract oil from the flowers ... Each year, it is the factories that set the price for the jasmine ...

It is difficult to say exactly how many of the 30,000 people involved in Egypt's jasmine industry are children. But during the summer of 2023 the BBC filmed across this region and spoke to many residents who told us the low price for jasmine meant they needed to include their children in their work.

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The factories export the jasmine oil to international fragrance houses where the perfumes are created.

But it is the perfume companies above them - which include L'Oréal and Estée Lauder - which hold all the power, according to independent perfumer Christophe Laudamiel and several other industry insiders.

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The issue, according to a senior executive with fragrance house Givaudan, is the lack of oversight the perfume companies have of their supply chains.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the executive said these companies relied on the fragrance houses to instruct third-party auditing companies to check for due diligence.