Six former child slaves from Mali, have dragged food producers, Nestle SA and Cargill Inc. to court for aiding and abetting their forced labour on Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa fields.
The six won a fresh chance to take their case to a US court, reports Bloomberg.
A federal appeals panel in San Francisco, on Tuesday, overturned a ruling that dismissed the case last year because the foreign plaintiffs had failed to show any US conduct was linked to the alleged enslavement.The appeal court found out that employees based at the companies’ US offices approved off-contract payments of personal spending money to farmers to ensure the low prices of cocoa, which was made possible by slave labour.
The plaintiffs, who sued over a decade ago, sought to hold the cocoa-buying companies liable for their captivity and mistreatment on farms in neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire.
Nestle and Cargill allegedly turned a blind eye to the practice to benefit from lower prices.
