17 October 2016

Members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility and investors who are actively engaging food and beverage companies on human rights concerns, welcomed today’s release of a benchmark report on corporate efforts to eradicate forced labor risks by Know The Chain.

The study ranks the top 20 global food and beverage companies on their efforts to address potential forced labor risks in their supply chains. Given that the agricultural sector is known to be one of the most at-risk for human rights and forced labor abuses, primarily due to its reliance on migrant labor, a ranking of performance on these measures for the most influential corporations in the sector is a critical first step to ensure progress is made on the issue...

Said Valentina Gurney, ICCR Associate Program Director, “ICCR members are currently engaging over 50 companies on forced labor risks via unethical recruitment including 12 of the 20 benchmarked in this report. With the U.S. being the largest corridor of migration in the world, American companies are definitely not immune to these risks, yet very few companies have forward-facing policies and internal protocols to address them...