BBC investigation: The dark side of some big luxury brands’ perfumes

Industry insiders tell us that a handful of companies that own multiple luxury brands are cutting their budgets, leading to greatly reduced salaries across their supply chains.

Egyptian jasmine pickers say this forces them to put their children to work.

and we’ve figured it out The audit systems used by the perfume industry to monitor supply chains are very poor,

Tomoya Obokata, the UN special rapporteur on slavery, expressed concern over evidence obtained by the BBC, including secret filming in Egypt’s jasmine fields during last year’s harvesting season.

“On paper, (the industry) promises a lot of good things, like supply chain transparency and the fight against child labor. By watching this footage, we see that they are not actually doing the things they promised.”

Heba – who lives in a village in the Gharbia district, the heart of Egypt’s jasmine region – wakes her family at 03:00am to harvest the flowers before the heat of the sun damages them.

What to say She needs help with her four children, aged between 5 and 15.. Like most jasmine pickers in Egypt, she is known as an “independent picker” and works on a small farmer’s field. The more she and her children collect, the more they earn.

The night we filmed her, she and her children managed to collect 1.5 kilograms of jasmine flowers. After paying a third of their profit to the landowner, He kept about US$1.5 for that night’s work. This amount is almost nothing, considering that inflation in Egypt has reached an all-time high and pickers often live below the poverty line.

Heba’s 10-year-old daughter Basmalla has been diagnosed a severe eye allergy.We attended a medical consultation with her, the doctor told her that her vision would be affected if she continued picking jasmine without anti-inflammatory treatment.

Once picked and weighed, the jasmine is transported through collection points to one of several local factories that extract oil from the flowers: the main three are A. Fakhri & Co., Hashem Brothers and Macalico. Each year, The price of jasmine is decided by the factories Raised by people like Heba.

It’s hard to know how many of the 30,000 people working in Egypt’s jasmine industry are minors. But we filmed throughout the region during the summer of 2023 and spoke to many residents who told us this The low price of jasmine forced them to employ their children.

In four different locations we observed, a large number of children under the age of 15 were working on small farms – which supply the main factories.

Several sources also told us that children were working on farms that are directly owned by the factory. MachlikoSo we went there to watch the film secretly and met the pickers there who told us that their age was between 12 to 14 years.

In Egypt it is illegal for minors under the age of 15 to work between the hours of 7:00 pm and 7:00 am.

The factories export jasmine oil to international fragrance houses that create perfumes. Givaudan, located in Switzerland, is one of the main and maintains a long relationship with A. Fakhri & Co.

But It’s the perfume companies above them – including L’Oreal and Estee Lauder – who have all the powerIndependent perfumer Christophe Laudamiel and other industry insiders tell us.

Is known “Teacher’s”They issue directives and set very limited budgets for fragrance houses, Laudamiel explained.

“The masters’ interest is to have the cheapest possible oil to put into a fragrance bottle,” and then sell it for the highest possible price, said Laudamiel, who worked inside a fragrance house for many years.

“In fact, they don’t set the pickers’ wages or the actual price of jasmine, because they are above that,” he explained.

But he assured that, because of the budget he had set, the pressure on wages is “transmitted downwards”, to factories and eventually to collectors.

In their promotional material, perfume companies and fragrance houses talk about ethical sourcing practices. All employers in the supply chain have signed a commitment letter with the United Nations, committing to follow its guidelines on safe labour practices and the elimination of child labour.

According to a senior executive at the Givaudan perfume house, the problem is Lack of oversight by perfume companies over their supply chains,

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the executive said these companies relied on fragrance houses to instruct outsourced auditing companies to check compliance.

The audit companies most frequently mentioned by groups and perfume houses on their websites and in letters to the UN Sedex and UEBT. Their audit reports are not publicly available, but by posing as a buyer looking for jasmine from an ethical source, we asked the A. Fakhri & Co. factory to send us photos of both of theirs.

The UEBT report, based on a factory visit last year, shows there were signs of a human rights problem, but does not provide details. Despite this, the company received a “verification”, which means it can say it provides “jasmine oil from a responsible source”.

The UEBT said in its response to the BBC: “A responsible sourcing certificate issued to a company, subject to an action plan… is valid until mid-2024, and will be withdrawn if… it is not implemented.” “.

The Sedex report gave the factory a glowing assessment, but its wording made it clear that the visit had already been announced and that Only the factory was auditedAnd not from the small farms from which it supplied jasmine.

Sedex told us it is “strongly opposed to all forms of labour rights abuses. But no single tool can be relied upon to uncover and address all risks or impacts on the environment and human rights.”

Lawyer Sarah Dadush, founder of Responsible Placement ProjectThe organisation, which seeks to improve human rights in global supply chains, said the BBC investigation “shows … that those systems are not working”.

The problem, he said, is “Auditors only audit what they are paid to audit”And it cannot include the price paid for labour, “one of the main causes” of child labour.

A. Fakhri & Co. told us that child labor is prohibited on both their farm and factory, but the majority of their jasmine comes from independent pickers. “In 2018, under the supervision of the UEBT, we launched the Jasmine Plant Protection Products Mitigation Project, which prohibits people under the age of 18 from working on farms.”

He added that “by any comparable standard in Egypt, jasmine harvesting is well remunerated.”

Macalico said he does not use pickers under the age of 18, and said he has raised the price he pays for jasmine the past two years, and will do so again this year. Hashem Brothers said our report was “based on misleading information.”

Givaudan, the perfume house that creates Idole L’Intense for Lancôme, called our research “Extremely worrying” He added: “It is up to all of us to continue taking steps to completely eliminate the risk of child labour.”

Fragrance house Firmenich, which makes Ikat Jasmine and Limone di Sicilia for Aron Beauty, and which was sourcing Macaliko Jasmine in summer 2023, told us it is now turning to a new supplier in Egypt. It added that it would “support initiatives that seek to collectively address this issue with industry partners and local jasmine farmers.”

We also present research findings to master perfumers.

L’Oréal said it is “actively committed to respecting the most protective standards of internationally recognized human rights,” adding that it “never calls on fragrance houses to drive down the market price of ingredients at the expense of farmers. Despite our strong commitments … we are aware that in some parts of the world where L’Oréal suppliers operate There are risks in meeting our commitments,

He added: “Whenever an issue arises, L’Oréal works proactively to identify the underlying causes and how to resolve it. In January 2024, our partner conducted an on-site human rights impact assessment to identify potential human rights violations and find ways to prevent and mitigate them, focusing on the risks of child labour.”

Estée Lauder said: “We believe the rights of all children must be protected. And we have contacted our suppliers to investigate this serious matter. We recognize the complex socio-economic environment surrounding the local jasmine supply chain, and we are taking steps to adopt greater transparency and work to improve the livelihoods of supplier communities.”

In Gharbia, Heba, a jasmine picker, was surprised when we told her the price at which the perfume was sold in the international market.

“People here are useless,” he said.

“I don’t care if people use the perfume, but I want people who use it to see the pain it causes to children. And report it.”

But the lawyer Sarah Dadush said the responsibility doesn’t fall on the consumer,

“This is not a problem for us to solve. We need laws…we need corporate responsibility, and that can’t just be passed on to consumers.”

*This article was written and edited by our journalists with the help of an artificial intelligence tool for translation a pilot program