When Westerners see palm oil listed as an ingredient in their snacks, they should know “it’s the same as consuming our sweat and blood,” says a man who was twice trafficked. AP investigates.
It started with a question.
While covering the Rohingya crisis, Minnesota-based investigative reporter Robin McDowell and Jakarta, Indonesia-based Margie Mason knew tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Myanmar were vulnerable to exploitation when they arrived in Malaysia. With a huge labor shortage in the palm oil sector, they wondered: Were desperate men being tricked or sold to help harvest fruit that ends up in the supply chains of some of America’s most iconic food and cosmetic brands?
That initial question launched a story that involved hundreds of interviews, many of them with frightened workers conducted under fraught circumstances. Many of the workers spoke of brutal conditions including child labor, outright slavery and allegations of rape. McDowell and Mason worked for months with New York-based editor Kristin Gazlay to land the deeply reported story.
Further, the reporters used data from producers, traders and buyers, as well as U.S. Customs records, to connect the oil harvested by the workers to major brands like Unilever, L’Oreal, Nestle and Procter & Gamble, and also showed how leading Western financial institutions pour billions of dollars into the industry.
A Malaysian worker harvests palm fruit from a plantation in peninsular Malaysia, March 6, 2019. While the punishing effects of palm oil on the environment have been decried for years, the industry’s labor issues have largely been ignored.
AP Photo / Gemunu Amarasinghe
A young girl holds palm oil fruit collected from a plantation in Sumatra, Indonesia, Nov. 13, 2017. An Associated Press investigation has found many palm oil workers in Indonesia and neighboring Malaysia endure exploitation, including child labor.
AP Photo / Binsar Bakkara
A young girl carries a bucket of palm oil fruit she collected on a plantation in Sumatra, Indonesia, Nov. 13, 2017. Workers who fail to meet impossibly high quotas can see their wages reduced, forcing entire families into the fields to make the daily number.
AP Photo / Binsar Bakkara
In early 2020, an Indonesian migrant worker rests after working on a Malaysian plantation run by the government-owned Felda, one of the world’s largest palm oil companies. Jum, a former worker who escaped from this same plantation, said the company confiscated and lost his Indonesian passport, leaving him vulnerable to arrest and forcing him to hide in the jungle.
AP Photo / Ore Huiying
Shamshu, a member of Myanmar's long-persecuted Rohingya minority, changes clothes upon returning home in peninsular Malaysia, March 4, 2019. He is part of an invisible workforce made up of millions of poor laborers, including many who face exploitation and abuse, within Malaysia and neighboring Indonesia. Together, the two countries produce an estimated 85% of the world’s $65 billion palm oil supply.
AP Photo / Gemunu Amarasinghe
Pots and pans hang in the kitchen of workers’ living quarters on a palm oil plantation run by government-owned Felda, in Malaysia in early 2020.
AP Photo / Ore Huiying
Bangladeshi men ride in the back of a truck heading to an immigration detention center in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, Feb. 6, 2019. Officials said a few dozen men were found locked in a house, waiting for a broker to bring them illegally by boat to Malaysia, with some planning to work on palm oil plantations.
AP Photo / Binsar Bakkara
An Indonesian migrant worker sharpens the blade of his sickle, used for cutting down palm oil fruit from tall trees in Sabah, Malaysia, Dec. 10, 2018. Many Indonesians working in Malaysia do not have proper documents, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation, arrest or deportation.
AP Photo / Binsar Bakkara
A woman sprays pesticide at a palm oil plantation in Sumatra, Indonesia, Sept. 8, 2018. Workers often cannot get medical care or access to clean water, sometimes relying on collecting rain runoff to wash the residue from their bodies after spraying dangerous chemicals or scattering fertilizer.
AP Photo / Binsar Bakkara
Workers load palm oil fruit weighing up to 22 kilograms (50 pounds) each into a truck on a palm oil plantation in Sumatra, Indonesia, Nov. 13, 2017. Many Western countries relied on oil from their own crops, like soybean and corn, for cooking, until major companies discovered the cheap oil from Southeast Asia had almost magical qualities.
AP Photo / Binsar Bakkara
A worker loads heavy bunches of palm oil fruit into a cart on a palm oil plantation in Sumatra, Indonesia, Nov. 13, 2017. Palm oil is virtually impossible to avoid in consumer products. Often disguised on labels as an ingredient listed by more than 200 names, it can be found in roughly half the products on supermarket shelves and in most cosmetic brands.
AP Photo / Binsar Bakkara
Smoke rises from a processing mill at a palm oil plantation in Sumatra, Indonesia, Sept. 8, 2018. The punishing effects of palm oil production on the environment have been decried for years.
AP Photo
Pillows and blankets are seen in the sleeping area of Karim, a Bangladeshi palm oil worker, at a house he shares with others in peninsular Malaysia, March 6, 2019. “I have been cheated five times in six years,” said Karim, a migrant worker who arrived in Malaysia legally after being promised a position in an electronics company, only to end up working for a subcontractor on several plantations owned by the biggest companies. He says once when he asked for his unpaid wages, his boss “threatened to run me over with his car.”
AP Photo / Gemunu Amarasinghe
A migrant worker trims his eyebrows at his living quarters on a palm oil plantation run by government-owned Felda, in Malaysia in early 2020.
AP Photo / Ore Huiying
Palm oil workers demand humane treatment, in a rally at Rantau Prapat, North Sumatra, Indonesia, Nov. 15, 2017. The Associated Press has found systematic labor abuses on plantations big and small, including some that meet certification standards set by the global Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, an association whose members include palm oil producers, buyers, traders and environmental watchdogs.
AP Photo / Binsar Bakkara
At his home in Pursat, Cambodia, March 30, 2019, Vannak Anan Prum, who was double trafficked, points to his illustration of an abusive former boss, a palm oil estate owner, in his graphic novel depicting his life as a slave on a fishing boat before being sold onto a Malaysian palm oil plantation.
AP Photo / Gemunu Amarasinghe
An Indonesian migrant worker places candles on the grave of her husband who worked on a Malaysian palm oil plantation, in Sabah, Malaysia, Dec. 9, 2018. As global demand for palm oil surges, plantations are struggling to find enough laborers, frequently relying on brokers who prey on the most vulnerable groups. The bodies of migrants who die are sometimes not sent home.
AP Photo / Binsar Bakkara
Zin Ko Ko Htwe, who was trafficked twice, bows after offering alms to a Buddhist monk outside his mother’s house in Myawaddy, Myanmar, June 14, 2019. Ko Htwe said that after escaping from a fishing boat in 2008, he was sold onto a palm oil plantation run by a police officer in Malaysia. When Americans and Europeans see palm oil is listed as an ingredient in their snacks, they should know “it’s the same as consuming our sweat and blood,” he says.
AP Photo / Gemunu Amarasinghe
The package, richly illustrated with photos by Bangkok-based photographer Gemunu Amarasinghe and Sumatra, Indonesia-based stringer Binsar Bakkara, vividly documented the horrors some workers in Malyasia and Indonesia face harvesting a product contained in half the items on supermarket shelves, ranging from toothpaste to candy bars. The work also included impressive video on the plantations and a video explainer on the pervasive use of palm oil in consumer products.
AP’s investigation was featured by CBSN and others.
CBSN
Reaction to the story was immediate. U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown and Ron Wyden called for a government ban on importing products made with child or forced labor and for holding companies accountable for labor abuses. And this week, the U.S. government said it would block shipments from a major Malaysian palm oil producer that was among those mentioned in the story, citing indications of forced labor, as well as physical and sexual violence.
For exposing abuses affecting tens of thousands of workers in a global industry that manufactures a vast array of products we buy and use daily, McDowell, Mason, Amarasinghe and Bakkara win this week’s Best of the Week prize.
