AT FAZENDA FLORESTA, in Heliodora, southern Minas Gerais, 20 workers were rescued from conditions analogous to slavery in August 2021. New evidence obtained by Repórter Brasil indicates, however, that even after the slave-labor case, the property remained certified by C.A.F.E. Practices, the Starbucks coffee chain’s program for verifying good practices.
This is the first time evidence has come to light that Starbucks’ seal was maintained for a Brazilian farm after a slave-labor case. The story is detailed in the report “STARBUCKS: New cases of modern slavery involving the multinational’s coffee suppliers,” published on Monday (27) by Repórter Brasil.
According to the inspection report by auditors from Brazil’s Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE), the victims at Fazenda Floresta suffered illegal deductions from their wages and slept in dormitories without ceiling lining and with gaps in the walls. One of the rooms used by the group was next to an area with open sewage, according to the same document, which deemed the conditions imposed on the workforce degrading.
Due to the case, the owner of Fazenda Floresta, producer Guilherme Sodré Alckmin Júnior, was included in April 2023 on the government’s Dirty List of employers held responsible for slave labor. Inclusion occurs only after the right to defense in two administrative instances at the MTE.
Workers rescued from Fazenda Floresta reported that personal protective equipment, such as gloves and boots, was deducted from their wages, which violates Brazilian labor law (Photo: Archive/ADERE)
Even after his inclusion on the Dirty List, however, the property remained certified by C.A.F.E. Practices. That is what the producer claims in an extrajudicial notice from October 2023, obtained by Repórter Brasil in August of this year. The document was attached to a lawsuit filed against the farmer by the Brazilian subsidiary of the European multinational Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC). In the notice, the producer’s legal counsel asserted that Fazenda Floresta then held C.A.F.E. Practices certification, valid until July 2024.
LDC is listed as a Starbucks coffee supplier. In the lawsuit, the company sought to terminate three coffee purchase-and-sale contracts signed with Alckmin Júnior in 2020 for delivery of 1,200 bags in subsequent harvests. Documents reviewed by the reporters indicated that the coffee delivered had to come from lots certified under the C.A.F.E. Practices program.