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.
The jasmine used in Lancôme Idôle L’Intense - and Ikat Jasmine and Limone Di Sicilia for Aerin Beauty - comes from Egypt, which produces about half the world’s supply of jasmine flowers - a key perfume ingredient.
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.
There are two types of child labor though. One is sending children down the mines, or using their ‘tiny nimble hands’ on looms, and the other is very traditional your kids help out on the farm.
Broad legislation like this tends to hurt the second type, and can make poverty worse.
When I worked in Asia it was normal for the kids to miss 4-5 days of school at rice planting season, and another week at harvest. This was smallholder stuff, but in a good season you sold the excess.
It’s a pretty complex issue especially when many commodities are primarily farmed by smallholders, then capitalized by corporations.
Even small production Fair trade chocolate almost certainly employed children. They were the kids of the farm owners.