A new report by the Associated Press details how child laborers toiling in unimaginable conditions on palm oil plantations have enriched the Girl Scouts.
“I thought Girl Scouts was supposed to be about making the world a better place.” @AP investigation ties exploitation of children in palm oil industry to the supply chains of America’s beloved Girl Scout cookies and other top food brands. https://t.co/EFtRhIkH7Q
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 29, 2020
Allegations of child labor have long plagued the palm oil industry in Indonesia and Malaysia. The neighboring countries account for 85% of the world’s palm oil. Other reported human rights abuses include exposure to dangerous pesticides, rape, and modern-day slavery, as a recent exposé in the Chicago Tribune described:
SUMATRA, INDONESIA — With his hand clamped tightly over her mouth, she could not scream, the 16-year-old girl recalls – and no one was around to hear her anyway. She describes how her boss raped her amid the tall trees on an Indonesian palm oil plantation that feeds into some of the world’s best-known cosmetic brands. He then put an ax to her throat and warned her: Do not tell.
While the $65 billion industry claims to have taken proactive steps to curb such abuses, the U.S. government recently banned palm oil imports from a prominent Malaysian producer.
It’s a horrific scandal the Girl Scouts should have seen coming. Instead, children on the other side of the world, but otherwise very much like those here, find themselves working under conditions no living American has endured.
At another plantation, a woman named Ola complains of fevers, coughing and nose bleeds after years of spraying dangerous pesticides with no protective gear. Making just $2 a day, with no health benefits, she can’t afford to see a doctor.
Hundreds of miles away, Ita, a young wife, mourns the two babies she lost in the third trimester. She regularly lugged loads several times her weight throughout both pregnancies, fearing she would be fired if she did not.
Entire families working under the unforgivable canopy of palm oil trees sometimes make less than $5 per day — the cost of most boxes of Girl Scout cookies.
The AP corroborated the allegations made by palm oil workers by interviewing hundreds of eyewitnesses, government officials, and activists who’ve devoted their lives to helping the victims of human trafficking.
Besides the Girl Scouts, a bevy of Western cosmetic and food companies, including Kellogg’s, Nestlé, and Unilever, use palm oil harvested under highly suspect ethical and environmental conditions.
For the time being, the ever-growing palm oil plantations continue their operations unimpeded.
They were NOT Keebler elves.
Vegetable oils are deadly, stop using them!
You mean “hydrogenated” of course.
What does the crime of rape have to do with Girl Scout cookies , you are just stirring up shit at the expense of the Girl Scouts .
Will not purchase Girl Scout cookies until you use coconut oil and made in the USA. Disgusting
They are supported by planned parenthood, if that tells you anything.
So, the Girl Scouts are supposed to be responsible for this girl’s rape? Or the farming labor laws in other nations?? Its time for the leftist crazies to grow up. Unless you want ALL production of ALL products limited to the United States, individual companies have no control over these issues. If I want a cookie I am not interested in the social welfare hysteria behind it’s production. Get real.
Just another hit job! Your passing this on is just another example of the “cancel culture”.
This organization has done a good job at developing young girls. Are there “bad actors”–yes. All professions and organizations have them and yes they need to be rooted out but don’t undermine the 99% of good they do.
The fortune 500 companies mentioned above (who have the resources) did not investigate the use of child labor. The people who are using and abusing them are the ones who need to be punished.
You are an imbecile, the scum at the top of the Girl scout rung – promote the filthiest, a moral teachings that these impressionable girls should not be subjected to. Abortion, sexual perversions just to name a few. The money these poor girls collect are used by libturd scum to line their pockets and push their librurd ideology. Sit your ass and all you posting asses down and dig and find out there truth before you spout your ignorant stupidity
Why don’t you treat the Boy scouts the same?
So AP is all worried about the Girl Scout cookies and the slave labor behind them, what are the chances the AP looks into how Nike shoes are made by slaves in China in concentration camps? How about the odds of the kids being used to harvest Lithium in Africa for all the electric car batteries? You say the odds are low because these are projects the liberal media support, say it isn’t so. What a coincidence that the liberal media covers only disparaging stories about issues they detest, and ignore the rest, weird isn’t it???
Wonder if the Boy Scouts had a hand in getting the GIRL SCOUTS slammed in this report.
Wait until Pervy Joe & the H0 raise our business taxes 1,000%…
THEN you’ll see tons of American businesses leave the country for cheap manufacturing in 3rd world countries…
there are a lot of alternatives for $5 packs with 6 cookies.
This is an issue in which critical thinking is critical. If you do not engage in the practice of critical thinking, you will read this article and then imagine that palm oil is a very bad thing and that palm oil plantations are very bad places and that Girl Scouts are bad girls for selling cookies that contain palm oil.
Before the China virus scamdemic shut down my candle business, I manufactured and sold beautiful palm wax pillar candles. I would betimes be questioned by prospective customers about the morality of the product owing to the effect of the expanding palm plantations were having on the natural environment of Malaysia and Indonesia. I would turn their attention to almost every other kind of agriculture in the world. All of it pushed the natural environment aside. I would like to see the thundering herds of bison on the Great Plains of North America again. I never shall see them to the scale of the early 19th century because we need space for the corn fields and the hog pens and the cattle ranches. Those people who are abusing workers on the palm plantations would be abusing them just the same if they were in some other industry. Let us turn against meanness and indifference and not beneficial and prosperous industries, Girl Scout cookies, and my palm wax pillar candles. .
This is a crappy article it insinuates that the little girls pushing cookie addiction are in the know of where ingredients come from how old was the person, and so on. Just let them be kids. You could have gone a dozen ways with this but you wanted to highlight little girls selling cookies it’s disgusting.
Stop the fake crying if you walk around with an I-Phone.
Stopped buy them the last bad report they got. They started tasting funny the last batch I bought.
Palm oil is sold and bought by multiple countries, no only the Girl Scouts.
We have a LOT of mass production Bakeries HERE in the U.S., why are they outsourcing these items? Well. for one thing,,<GREED> and it’s NOT for the good of the Girl’s Scouts. They first Destroyed the Boy Scouts and now they are doing the same with the Girls Scouts. This needs to STOP,,,NOW.
Apply to sports shoes etc Nike as well Make= for ALL overseas
A socialist press, you are a very big part of this problem! Your tyrannical communist ways give rise to these demons!