High Forced Labor Risk in Chinese Apple Juice Concentrate, Mexican Fruits and Vegetables, Study Says

Apple juice concentrate from China and avocados, tomatoes and peppers from Mexico are among the imported foods identified as carrying the highest risk for forced labor in their supply chains, according to an academic study published July 24 in the online journal Nature Food, an offshoot of the journal Nature.

Written by professors at Tufts University and the University of Nottingham, led by Tufts’ Nicole Tichenor Blackstone, the study found that 13% of the risk of forced labor in the U.S. food supply was attributable to China, with 76% of that alone attributed to apple juice concentrate, of which China is the leading U.S. supplier.

From Mexico, to which the study attributed 8% of the forced labor risk in U.S. food supply chains, “most of the imported risk was embedded in unprocessed fruits and vegetables,” it said.

Other imported food products identified by the study, which did not cover seafood, as high risk for forced labor included shelled cashews, in particular from Vietnam, which was assessed as “very high risk.” Rice also “showed substantial variability in risk depending on the country of origin,” the study said.

Cocoa powder and cake had the second-highest forced labor risk of any food, the study said. Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana “accounted for 84% of the agriculture stage risk for this product,” it said.

However, despite the U.S. government’s attention to imports, the study found that over half of the forced labor risk in the U.S. food supply came from operations in the U.S. itself, though it also found a “disproportionately low risk relative to the economic value and mass of domestic production in total.” The study cited potential “overreliance on low-income migrant workers vulnerable to exploitation due to undocumented status” or the visa programs they use.

“These immigration programmes bind workers to a single employer, deny them access to the labour market and create multiple dependencies on employers that exacerbate vulnerability, such as transport between employer-supplied housing and fields and farms,” the study said.

While measures restricting trade, including CBP Withhold Release Orders, “are increasingly leveraged to reduce risks in globalized supply chains, our findings suggest that these should be just one tool in a larger strategy that harmonizes import controls with national and local regulation, monitoring, and enforcement to mitigate domestic risk,” the study said.

In particular, the study cited the “European Union Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, “which seeks to address multiple aspects of the global value chain and require businesses to be liable for human rights and environmental abuses,” as an example of a “more robust method of action.”