BRAZIL/DENMARK – Two of the world’s biggest coffee companies have admitted their beans may have been harvested using slave labor on plantations in Brazil. Nestlé and Jacobs Douwe Egberts, which account for 40 per cent of the global market, said they could not rule out human rights abuses in their supply chain because they don’t know the names of all the plantations that grow their coffee.  The admissions came after an investigation by media and research centre Danwatch found that slave-like conditions were still widespread across Brazil’s coffee-producing industry.

The Denmark-based group claimed workers were trafficked for little or no pay, forced to live on rubbish heaps and made to drink water alongside animals.(Daily Mail)…[+]