Global food companies Danone SA and Dairy Partners Americas Brasil (DPA), partly owned by Nestle SA, are in danger of being added to Brazil’s “dirty list” of companies that have engaged in slave labor, government officials said on Wednesday.
The list is considered one of the country’s best tools to fight slave labor. Organizations that appear on it are barred from accessing credit from state banks or other public financial support.
The two companies have been caught up in an ongoing audit of the dairy supply chain in Sao Paulo, said Renato Bignami, the labor inspector coordinating the audit.
“They received a notification [of the labor violations] that, if deemed well-founded, will result in the names of the two companies being added to the dirty list,” Bignami told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Both companies have denied wrongdoing.
Danone and DPA are accused of being complicit with an businessman who kept 28 people in debt bondage, because their affiliated distributors sold him their products in bulk without monitoring working conditions at his operation.
The door-to-door salesmen had been trafficked from poor regions of the state of Ceara, and made to sell soon-to-be-expired yoghurt at a discount in the city of Salto, in the state of Sao Paulo.
Investigators found that about 70 percent of the products being sold were from Danone and Nestle brands. The other 30 percent were from smaller companies that will also be notified over the next few weeks.
“Many workers arrived already in debt due to the cost of travel,” said Luis Alexandre Faria, the labor inspector that coordinated operations on the ground. “They sometimes worked over 15 hours in extreme heat, cold or rain.”
While Danone and DPA were not directly involved, inspectors want to hold them accountable for not monitoring their distribution chain.
Danone Brasil, maker of products like Activia and Evian water, denied having any relationship with the businessman, and said it will fight the claim that they were complicit.
“The company emphasizes that it has worked in partnership with the Labor Secretariat to spread the company’s best practices and to be an active agent against all forms of slave labor among the more than 10,000 businesses that are part of the complex supply chain that distributes its products,” the company said in an e-mail.
DPA, a joint venture between New Zealand company Fonterra and Nestle that sells refrigerated products, also said it did nothing wrong.
The company said that upon finding out about the case, in October last year, it ceased its relationship with the distributor involved. It also said that it is in the final stages of hiring an external auditor to verify the conditions in which their micro-distributors operate.
“Beyond that, in line with its principles and corporate values, both companies [Nestle and DPA] have come to adopt, in its distribution chain, measures to ensure that its commercial partners can contribute to the fight against work in conditions analogous to slavery,” the companies said in an e-mail.
SEEKING CLARITY: Washington should not adopt measures that create uncertainties for ‘existing semiconductor investments,’ TSMC said referring to its US$165 billion in the US Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) told the US that any future tariffs on Taiwanese semiconductors could reduce demand for chips and derail its pledge to increase its investment in Arizona. “New import restrictions could jeopardize current US leadership in the competitive technology industry and create uncertainties for many committed semiconductor capital projects in the US, including TSMC Arizona’s significant investment plan in Phoenix,” the chipmaker wrote in a letter to the US Department of Commerce. TSMC issued the warning in response to a solicitation for comments by the department on a possible tariff on semiconductor imports by US President Donald Trump’s
The government has launched a three-pronged strategy to attract local and international talent, aiming to position Taiwan as a new global hub following Nvidia Corp’s announcement that it has chosen Taipei as the site of its Taiwan headquarters. Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday last week announced during his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei that the Nvidia Constellation, the company’s planned Taiwan headquarters, would be located in the Beitou-Shilin Technology Park (北投士林科技園區) in Taipei. Huang’s decision to establish a base in Taiwan is “primarily due to Taiwan’s talent pool and its strength in the semiconductor
Industrial production expanded 22.31 percent annually last month to 107.51, as increases in demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications drove demand for locally-made chips and components. The manufacturing production index climbed 23.68 percent year-on-year to 108.37, marking the 14th consecutive month of increase, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. In the first four months of this year, industrial and manufacturing production indices expanded 14.31 percent and 15.22 percent year-on-year, ministry data showed. The growth momentum is to extend into this month, with the manufacturing production index expected to rise between 11 percent and 15.1 percent annually, Department of Statistics
An earnings report from semiconductor giant and artificial intelligence (AI) bellwether Nvidia Corp takes center stage for Wall Street this week, as stocks hit a speed bump of worries over US federal deficits driving up Treasury yields. US equities pulled back last week after a torrid rally, as investors turned their attention to tax and spending legislation poised to swell the US government’s US$36 trillion in debt. Long-dated US Treasury yields rose amid the fiscal worries, with the 30-year yield topping 5 percent and hitting its highest level since late 2023. Stocks were dealt another blow on Friday when US President Donald
RSS