Children have chosen ingredients used by suppliers to two major beauty companies, the BBC can reveal.
A BBC investigation into perfume supply chains last summer found that jasmine used by Lancôme and Aerin Beauty suppliers had been picked by minors.
All luxury perfume brands claim to have a zero-tolerance policy towards child labor.
L’Oréal, Lancôme’s owner, said it was committed to respecting human rights. Estée Lauder, the owner of Aerin Beauty, said it had contacted its suppliers.
The jasmine used in Lancôme Idôle L’Intense – and Ikat Jasmine and Limone Di Sicilia for Aerin Beauty – comes from Egypt, which produces about half the world’s supply of jasmine flowers – a key perfume ingredient.
Industry insiders told us that the handful of companies that own many luxury brands are squeezing their budgets, resulting in very low wages. Egyptian jasmine pickers say this forces them to involve their children.
And we have discovered that the audit systems the perfume industry uses to monitor supply chains are deeply flawed.
The UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, Tomoya Obokata, said he was disturbed by the BBC’s evidence, including undercover filming in Egyptian jasmine fields during last year’s picking season.
‘On paper, her [the industry] promise so many good things, such as supply chain transparency and the fight against child labor. When you look at these images, they’re not really doing the things they said they were going to do.”
Heba, who lives in a village in Gharbia district, the heart of Egypt’s jasmine region, wakes her family at 3 a.m. to pick the flowers before the sun’s heat damages them.
Heba says she needs her four children – aged 5 to 15 – to help. Like most jasmine pickers in Egypt, she is a so-called ‘independent picker’ and works on a small farm. The more she and her children can pick, the more they earn.
The night we filmed her, she and her children managed to pick 1.5kg of jasmine flowers. After paying a third of her earnings to the landowner, she was left with about $1.5 [£1.18] for that night’s work. This is worth less than ever before as inflation in Egypt has reached record highs and pickers often live below the poverty line.
Heba’s 10-year-old daughter Basmalla has also been diagnosed with a severe eye allergy. During a medical consultation we attended with her, the doctor told her that her vision will be affected if she continues to pick jasmine without treating the inflammation.
Once the jasmine has been picked and weighed, it is transferred via collection points to one of several local factories that extract oil from the flowers. The main three are A Fakhry and Co, Hashem Brothers and Machalico. Every year it is the factories that determine the price for the jasmine picked by people like Heba.
It is difficult to say exactly how many of the 30,000 people involved in Egypt’s jasmine industry are children. But during the summer of 2023, the BBC filmed the entire region and spoke to many residents who told us that the low price for jasmine meant they had to involve their children in their work.
We witnessed that in four different locations a significant number of pickers on small farms – which supply the main factories – were children under the age of 15. Multiple sources also told us that children were working on farms directly owned by the Machalico. factory, so we went undercover to film there and found pickers who told us their ages ranged from 12 to 14.
It is illegal for anyone under the age of 15 to work in Egypt between 7:00 PM and 7:00 AM.
The factories export the jasmine oil to international fragrance houses where the perfumes are made. Givaudan, based in Switzerland, is one of the largest and has a long-standing relationship with A Fakhry and Co.
But it’s the perfume companies above them – including L’Oréal and Estée Lauder – that hold all the power, according to independent perfumer Christophe Laudamiel and several other industry insiders.
Known as “the masters,” they set the brief and a very tight budget for the fragrance houses, he said.
“The interest of the masters is to put the cheapest possible oil in the fragrance bottle,” and then sell it at the highest possible price, said Mr. Laudamiel, who worked for years in one of the fragrance houses.
“They don’t actually determine the salary or wages of the harvesters, nor the actual price of jasmine, because they are above that,” he explained.
But he said that because of the budget they set, the pressure on wages is “trickle-down” – to the factories and ultimately to the pickers.
“There is a big discrepancy between the value talked about in the marketing pitch and what is actually given to the harvesters,” he added.
In their promotional materials, perfume companies and fragrance houses paint a picture of ethical purchasing practices. Each employer in the supply chain has also signed a declaration of commitment to the UN, pledging to adhere to UN guidelines on safe working practices and the elimination of child labor.
The problem, according to a senior executive at fragrance house Givaudan, is the lack of oversight that perfume companies have over their supply chains.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the executive said these companies relied on the fragrance houses to instruct third-party audit firms to check due diligence.
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The accounting firms most often mentioned by the conglomerates and fragrance houses on their websites and in letters to the UN are Sedex and UEBT. Their audit reports are not publicly available, but by posing as a buyer looking for ethically sourced jasmine, we managed to get the A Fakhry and Co factory to send them both to us.
UEBT’s report, based on a visit to the factory last year, shows there was evidence of a human rights problem but does not go into detail. Despite this, the company was ‘verified’, meaning it can say it offers ‘responsibly sourced jasmine oil’.
In its response, UEBT said: “One company has been issued a responsible sourcing certificate, subject to an action plan… valid until mid-2024, and will be withdrawn if… it is not implemented.”
The Sedex report gave the factory a favorable assessment, but the report made it clear that the visit had been announced in advance and that only the factory site itself had been checked, and not the small farms where jasmine came from.
Sedex told us that the company “resolutely opposes all forms of labor rights violations. But one instrument alone cannot or should not be relied upon to identify and address all risks and impacts to the environment and human rights.”
Lawyer Sarah Dadush, founder of the Responsible Contracting Project, which aims to improve human rights in global supply chains, said the BBC investigation “reveals… those systems don’t work”.
The problem, she says, is that “the accountants only audit what they are paid to do,” and that may not include the price paid to the labor force – “a major cause” of child labor.
A Fakhry and Co told us that child labor is prohibited both on the farm and in the factory, but that the vast majority of jasmine comes from independent collectors. “In 2018, under the supervision of the UEBT, we initiated the Jasmine Plant Protection Products Mitigation Project, which imposes a ban on persons under the age of 18 from working on the farms.” It added that “by similar standards in Egypt, jasmine picking is well paid.”
Machalico said it does not use pickers under the age of 18 and said it has increased the price it pays for jasmine over 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 makes Lancôme Idôle L’Intense, described our research as “very alarming”, adding “it is incumbent on all of us to continue to take action to completely eliminate the risk of child labor”.
Firmenich, the fragrance house that makes Ikat Jasmine and Limone Di Sicilia for Aerin Beauty, and bought jasmine from Machalico in summer 2023, told us it is now using a new supplier in Egypt. It added that it will “support initiatives that seek to jointly address this issue with industry partners and local jasmine farmers.”
We also presented the findings of the research to the perfume masters.
L’Oréal said it is “actively committed to respecting the most protective internationally recognized human rights standards”, adding that it “never[s] Fragrance houses charge lower than market prices for ingredients, at the expense of farmers. Despite our strong commitments… we know that in certain parts of the world where L’Oréal suppliers operate, there are risks of compliance with our commitments.”
It added: “Every time a problem arises, L’Oréal works proactively to identify the root causes and the way to solve the problem. In January 2024, our partner on the ground conducted a human rights impact assessment to identify potential human rights violations and ways to prevent and mitigate them, with a focus on the risks of child labor.”
Estée Lauder said: “We believe that the rights of all children should be protected. And we have reached out to our suppliers to investigate this very serious matter. We recognize the complex socio-economic environment surrounding the local jasmine supply chain and we are taking action action to achieve better transparency and work towards improving the livelihoods of purchasing communities.”
Back in Gharbia, jasmine picker Heba was shocked when we told her the price at which perfume was sold on the international market.
“The people here are worthless,” she said.
“I don’t mind people using perfume, but I want the people who use this perfume to see the pain of children in it. And make their voices heard.”
But lawyer Sarah Dadush said the responsibility does not lie with the consumer.
“This is not a problem for us to solve. We need legislation… we need corporate responsibility, and it can’t just be the consumer’s responsibility.”
