‘Cocoa Life’ Sustainability Claim for Oreos, Other Mondelez Products Is False and Misleading, Class Action Alleges

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A proposed class action lawsuit alleges food giant Mondelez International has misrepresented its cocoa-sourcing practices as sustainable and free from forced labor.

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The 30-page false advertising lawsuit charges that the supply and production practices for chocolate Mondelez items whose packaging displays the company’s “Cocoa Life” logo, which purportedly affirms that a product is made sustainably, in fact contribute to “grievous and unsustainable labor abuses,” including “the worst forms of child and forced labor.”

The suit alleges Mondelez, one of the largest chocolate makers in the world, has misled consumers to believe that the Cocoa Life logo, which includes the words “100% sustainably sourced cocoa,” assures that a product’s supply chain is rigorously vetted for ethical labor standards and environmental sustainability.

In truth, the lawsuit says, Mondelez products such as Oreos, Toblerone and more are neither responsibly sourced nor environmentally sustainable, and are the result of child labor and “destructive environmental practices” such as deforestation.

“Mondelez tells consumers that the Products ‘protect the planet’ and ‘respect the human rights of people within our own operations and in our value chain’ but offers no publicly available standards to support, back up, or underlie that marketing,” the complaint states. “Consequently, Mondelez’s marketing—which leads consumers to believe that the cocoa in its Products is responsibly sourced and ‘sustainable’—is false and misleading.”

According to the case, fair and sustainable labor practices are important to consumers, who increasingly look for items made without the use of child or forced labor or exploitative working conditions. Cocoa farming has a well-documented history of using child and forced labor, primarily in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, which supply about two-thirds of the world’s cocoa, including cocoa used by Mondelez, the suit states.

The filing accuses Mondelez of wielding its Cocoa Life logo on product packaging to mislead consumers by misrepresenting that the foods support a healthy supply chain that benefits farmers and their communities. In truth, the lawsuit alleges, Mondelez’s cocoa supply chains are “linked to farms in Ghana where children as young as 10 years old work with machetes and farmers are paid less than two euro per day.”

The case cites a Washington Post article that noted that, according to a report funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, more than 1.56 million children work in the cocoa industry in West Africa, including 1.48 million who have been exposed to “at least one component of hazardous child labor in cocoa production.” The article identified Mondelez as one of the companies that cannot “guarantee that any of their products were free of child labor,” the suit says.

The Mondelez lawsuit looks to represent all consumers who bought any Mondelez products bearing the Cocoa Life logo in the United States within the applicable statute of limitations period.

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