Fairtrade’s then-chief executive, Rob Cameron, resigned within one week of publication of Bloomberg’s Dec. 15 story.

Fairtrade International turns blind eye to child labor...now that doesn't seem FAIR at all!!!

Bloomberg reported last month on the use of child labor in the Burkina Faso program, focusing on the plight of so-called foster children who are kept out of school and forced to work the fields. Their potential vulnerability on fair-trade farms across the country was highlighted in a 2008 unpublished study commissioned by the program’s sponsors in Burkina Faso. Victoria’s Secret has said it never saw the report.



The U.S. government’s preliminary inquiry is being done by the ICE Homeland Security Investigations division, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly on such matters.


The department is responsible for enforcing Section 307 of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, a 1930 law banning the importation of goods manufactured by forced labor. Those powers were strengthened by a 1999 executive order and anti-human trafficking laws passed in 2005 and 2008. The government can seize goods and impose fines.

Under regulations separate from those being examined by homeland security, the U.S. Department of Labor had determined the problem of forced child labor in Burkina Faso’s cotton sector was serious enough to ban its fiber from the federal government’s procurement system. It’s one of just 29 products from a total of 21 countries that U.S. agencies are forbidden from buying under those rules.