For the first time, we have whistleblower testimony proving that Cargill, Mars, and Mondelēz have defrauded the public by knowingly padding their pockets through pervasive child labor. This lawsuit exposes their decades of denial, evasion, and falsified social programs for the fraud they are.

“This time will be different,” Executive Director Terry Collingsworth stated. “We are using time-tested common law claims to hold Cargill and the other companies accountable for their serious human rights crimes against children.”

The CBS feature above was a vivid portrayal of the brutal conditions children like our 9 plaintiffs face, including machete scars and sicknesses from the unsafe chemicals they regularly handle. For decades these companies have stated a commitment to “phasing out” this type of child labor, plastering photos of smiling children holding bookbags on their website and sharing lists of names of the youth they claim to have rehabilitated through their benevolent programs.

We now can prove the malevolent nature of these photo-ops. Some of our child plaintiffs shared that they were handed a backpack and a workbook with the slogan, “I am a child, I play, I go to school,” before heading right back to work on the plantation the next day. Other children listed by these companies as rehabilitated don’t even exist - the names were fabricated to create a semblance of progress while the profits from exploited labor continued to roll in.

We know the road to justice is a long one - we have been fighting against these types of exploitative practices in the cocoa industry for decades. With the courage of our nine young plaintiffs and the shocking testimony of this whistleblower, we are thrilled to finally have the evidence to hold companies accountable.