Starbucks sued for misleading customers with ‘100% ethical coffee’ seal

The National Consumer League (NCL), a US consumer protection organization, said it had filed a lawsuit against coffee company Starbucks, alleging that it make false and misleading statements about “100% ethically sourced” coffee and tea.

NCL provided widespread evidence that the company depends on farms and cooperatives to make commitments serious violations of labor and human rights.

The lawsuit, filed in D.C. Superior Court in New York, says Starbucks sought to respond to its consumers’ desire for responsible corporate practices by launching a multi-year campaign to position itself as a leader in ethical purchasing. coffee and tea, even developed its own verification standards called Coffee and Farmer Fairness (CAFE) practices.

In a promotional video airing during the 2023 holiday season, a Starbucks spokesperson claims that when you drink Starbucks coffee, “you know it’s ethically sourced.”

In fact, the lawsuit alleges, the company’s advertising misleads consumers and fails to disclose the widespread sourcing of coffee and tea from documented farms and cooperatives. child labor, forced labor, sexual harassment, assault and other human rights violations.

“In every bag of coffee and box of K-cups on store shelves, Starbucks is telling consumers a lie,” said Sally Greenberg, executive director of the National Consumers League. “The facts are clear: there are serious human and labor rights violations throughout Starbucks’ supply chain, and Consumers have the right to know exactly what they are paying for. “NCL is committed to exposing and stopping this deceptive practice and holding Starbucks accountable for meeting its demands.”

A press release published by NCL revisits a 2022 case in which a Brazilian labor prosecutor filed a complaint against Brazil’s largest supplier, Starbucks, citing slavery-like working conditions, including illegal trafficking of more than 30 migrant workers. At Cooxupé, which represents 40 percent of Starbucks’ coffee supply in Brazil and is certified by CAFE Practices, investigators found that workers were working long hours and carrying bags of coffee weighing more than 100 pounds on their backs.

“Starbucks’ failure to implement meaningful reforms to its coffee and tea sourcing practices in the face of these criticisms and documented labor abuses at source farms is completely inconsistent with the consumer’s reasonable understanding of what it means to be “committed to 100% ethical sourcing”– the complaint says.

“Similarly, Starbucks’ failure to disclose to consumers the unreliability of these certification programs and their limitations as a guarantee of ethical sourcing is a misleading omission essential to the consumer’s rational decision-making.”

To protect consumers who They may buy unethical coffee or tea. and pay premium prices for these products, the National Consumer League is seeking an ordinance that would prohibit Starbucks from continuing to engage in misleading advertising and require the company to conduct a corrective advertising campaign.

The representations made to consumers will require Starbucks to significantly reform its purchasing and monitoring practices to ensure that workers at farms and cooperatives that supply coffee and tea products are treated fairly and in accordance with the law.

Starbucks Global Supply Chain Abuse Pattern

NCL says that over the past decade, a wide range of investigations by government agencies and journalists have revealed a clear pattern of labor and human rights violations at farms and cooperatives favored by Starbucks, even those that have received certification. company.

At James Finlay’s plantation in Kenya, the Starbucks tea fountain, undercover BBC journalists exposed widespread sexual violence including bosses who force women to have sex in exchange for work. Thousands of Finlay workers have also filed a class-action lawsuit, alleging that grueling working conditions wear down their bodies and detailing Finlay’s practice of firing workers with chronic injuries rather than providing them with medical care. It is reported that workers The Finleys receive a salary equivalent to $30 per week.

At the Mesas farm in Brazil, certified by Starbucks, in 2022. Law enforcement officers rescued 17 workers including 15, 16 and 17 year olds, in slavery-like conditions that included working outdoors, without protection from the elements, and requiring workers to lift bags of coffee weighing more than 130 pounds. The Mesas farm also failed to provide workers with the personal protective equipment required by Brazilian law.

On three Starbucks-certified farms in Guatemala, Channel 4 found that children under 13 work 40 or 50 hours a week.

Although Starbucks has received repeated reports of widespread abuses by its suppliers and at CAFE Practices-certified farms and cooperatives, the company has not responded with meaningful action.

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“Starbucks deceptively fails to disclose facts material to consumers’ purchasing decisions, including the fact that many of its supposedly ethical suppliers used forced and/or child labor, i.e. “CAFE practices do not guarantee the absence of forced and child labor,” the complaint says.