14 DAY TRIAL // Victoria's Secret, the giant American lingerie retailer worth billions of dollars shows how a beautiful company can keep a big ugly secret.
A new investigation developed by Bloomberg News Agency reveal the company is no stranger to modern child slavery, a phenomenon noticeable in most of the developing countries, Daily Mail informs.
Its appealing bras, pajamas and lingerie require a significant amount of cotton, often picked by children who are forced to work on fields under appalling conditions.
Even more horrifying is that these young workers are compelled to display satisfying results and are usually threatened or even beaten. Kids not older than 10 years are stopped from going to school and receiving an education by farmers who consider them “foster children.”
Foster children are a mere asset for 57% of the 89 producers monitored by the agency, who exploit more than one young slave. Moreover, it seems the Fair-trade program developed last year recorded the participation of 7,000 farmers.
Burkina Faso, a poor nation from West Africa, has become famous worldwide not for a rapid development but for a child labor phenomenon considered “endemic.”
One of the victims from Burkina Faso is only 13 years old and has to use her own hands to dig no less than 500 crop rows, because the landowner can't afford to invest in proper tools.
Although high-class fashionable items launched by Victoria's Secret end up in stores under the Fair Trade program, Bloomberg News Agency suggests that the cotton sourcing is far from being sustainable and “fair.”
While trying to respond to this severe accusation, a spokesperson from the company has stated that the current claims are being taken into consideration.
“We take these allegations regarding cotton farming in Burkina Faso very seriously, as they describe behaviour contrary to our company's values and the code of labour and sourcing standards we require all our suppliers to meet,” declared officials from Victoria's Secret.