Posted on 05/28/2024 3:22:28 AM PDT by RandFan
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.
And we have discovered the auditing systems the perfume industry uses to check on supply chains are deeply flawed.
The UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, Tomoya Obokata, said he was disturbed by the BBC's evidence, which includes undercover filming in Egyptian jasmine fields during last year's picking season.
"On paper, they [the industry] are promising so many good things, like supply chain transparency and the fight against child labour. Looking at this footage, they are not actually doing things that they promised to do."
Heba - who lives in a village in the district of Gharbia, the heart of Egypt's jasmine region - wakes her family at 03:00 to begin picking the flowers before the sun's heat damages them.
Heba says she needs her four children - aged from 5 to 15 - to help....
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Says in the article the child pickers in Egypt net $1.50 if lucky ...
All so rich dames can smell good even after coitus.
But they should be paid better.
Yes, and an incredibly lucrative industry ('beauty' products categorically). The amount of money spent on cremes, lotions, 'serums', misting devices, laser devices, make-up, and hair products is astronomical - and most of these don't do squat.
Yes these companies are all billion dollar luxury brands, etc
Scandal
The price of perfume and cosmetics sold in US department stores is marked up two times plus the base price on invoice (sold to store for ten dollars, customer price on bottle is thirty dollars), I remember from my days working in department store pricing section. Eye-opening.
I stopped buying Avon after I learned that they use aborted babies, in production and/or R&D. Now I’m beginning to think they all do ...
At least they are not crawling around in mud, handling handling toxic materials.
I think the markup on jewelry is even higher, but am not sure.
They sure charge enough for fancy shmancy perfumes.
At least they have jobs, good OJT
Considering how much some of these perfumes cost... it’s disgusting. I stopped buying them, the products they use, especially after they were forbidden from using ambergris, are inferior.
Headline makes it sound like the companies are hiring children, but, apparently, it’s the pickers themselves who are employing their own children.
FTA: 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.
Which means they're bad for men. Even perfumed dryer sheets/softeners. ANY man-made scent is to be avoided.
(or not...ymmv)
The evil powers-that-be
need men without chests.
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