John,

An explosive new investigation by Coffee Watch and China Labor Watch shows that Starbucks coffee is still tainted with abuse.

Working from sunrise to sunset, no rest, exposure to toxic pesticides, and even child labour – these abuses all violate the terms of Starbucks' Coffee Farmer and Equity (C.A.F.E.) certification scheme.

Clearly Starbucks' C.A.F.E. isn't working.

Let's strike while the iron is hot, and demand that Starbucks adopts international fair trade standards to stop the abuses once and for all.

Tell Starbucks to stop coffee slavery, and adopt international fair trade standards NOW.

Four years ago, The Guardian reported that children as young as eight picked coffee beans on farms in Guatemala supplying Starbucks. In 2023 Repórter Brazil’s report "Behind Starbucks Coffee" showed that the company’s supply chain was still stained with rights abuses. And now the "Ghost Farms and Coffee Laundering" investigation shows that the same was true in Starbucks's Chinese coffee supply chain in 2024.

Starbucks’ suppliers have brushed off child labour exposés that they couldn’t deny as simply human resources “mistakes”, while the US coffeehouse chain claims to have “zero tolerance” for such abuse anywhere in its supply chain. And still, the human rights violations continue…

While no certification system is perfect, experts have said for years that Starbucks’ verification program–C.A.F.E. Practices–could be improved by adopting international fair trade standards, and by including truly surprise inspections to stop abuses.

Sign the petition to Starbucks CEO, Laxman Narasimhan.

We’ve delivered impactful petitions to Starbucks before, and we know that the company can be moved with public pressure exposing its dirty secrets. Our community helped make Starbucks improve its palm oil sourcing policy in 2016, and in 2018 we exposed the company’s unmet promise to deal with the mountain of its throw-away cups.

It’s almost 2025, and the world’s largest coffeehouse chain is still linked to slavery. This has to stop.