Dear friends,
Since launching in November 2024, Coffee Watch has hit the ground running — we want to share just how far we’ve come.
Here’s what we’ve been up to:
📢 Mobilizing Pressure and Visibility
We amassed over 5 million estimated views across +150 media articles about our work in the NYT, Le Monde, El Pais, Spiegel, The Guardian, WaPo, WSJ, and many others!
We launched our Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Blue Sky, Youtube and X accounts (please follow us!), going from zero to nearly 1 million views across our social media platforms - big thanks to fantastic social media influencers in Mexico and Brazil.
We built a 100K+ strong petition with Eko, calling on Starbucks to stop coffee slavery in its supply chains.
🚨 Investigations & Strategic Litigation That Made Headlines
🇨🇳 Our report Ghost Farms and Coffee Laundering with China Labor Watch, revealed abuses in Chinese coffee supply chains of companies like Starbucks and Nestlé, and earned coverage in The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and top coffee media.
🇲🇽 Our report Exploitation & Opacity with Mexican organizations ProDESC and Empower exposed exploitation in coffee supply chains of companies like Starbucks and Nestlé — covered by El País, Reporter Brasil, L’Espresso and many more media especially in Mexico… In fact, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo actually talked about our report at length in a presidential press conference!
🇧🇷 Moving from China to Mexico to Brazil, we launched a petition pursuant to section 307 of the Tariff Act asking US Customs to stop slavery-tainted Brazilian coffee from entering the US border – alongside our allies at International Rights Advocates who filed a TVPRA human trafficking Lawsuit on behalf of eight trafficked and enslaved workers who were rescued from farms in Starbucks’ supply chains. Our launch received global media coverage from The Guardian, Spiegel, Le Monde, The New York Times, and over 150+ other pieces in the media globally.'
🇧🇷 Recently, we launched a campaign calling on FARM RIO - a fashion brand celebrated for its commitment to sustainability - to drop its drinkware collaboration with Starbucks, citing the coffee giant’s documented record of human rights abuses. The campaign received media attention from Women’s Wear Daily, Human Rights Today,Reporter Brasil, Rádio Peāa Brasil, and more!
🌍 Defending Forests and the EU Deforestation Regulation
Defending Forests by Pushing Back on anti-EUDR Coffee Lobbying
We published “Get Deforestation Out of Europe’s Coffee” revealing pernicious attacks by coffee industry lobby groups to derail the EUDR, and debunking misinformation about the EUDR regarding coffee.
- Our paper was picked up by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, and company responses to the paper proved that many coffee companies — despite being members of industry lobby groups hostile to the EUDR — publicly affirmed their support for the EUDR.
- We compiled positive company responses regarding the EUDR and then sent a letter to key MEPs, urging them to listen to the positive feedback of the companies themselves, not the lobby groups claiming to speak for them.
We supported the launch of the AidEnvironment new Compliance Checker
The Compliance Checker links incidents of deforestation, forest conversion, and human rights abuses to companies that import forest risk commodities into the EU such as coffee. The first company profile examines JDE Peet’s, one of the world’s largest coffee companies, mapping coffee-driven deforestation in Brazil that could find itself in JDE’s supply chain.
We joined several group letters and other group actions
To advocate for strong EU regulation we joined an open letter calling on the EU commission to ensure EUDR benchmarking reflects human rights and environmental risks. We signed on to a joint letter to Ursula von der Leyen against rolling back social and environmental regulations, and we signed on to a joint statement calling on the EU to uphold the integrity of the EUDR.
We also joined 200 organizations opposing the House tax bill allowing the Treasury to stop designated NGOS of their no-tax status.
We joined 100 organizations urging the restoration of grant programs and reversal of staffing cuts in the U.S. Department of Labor’s International Labor Affairs Bureau.
🤝 Movement Building
We joined VOCAL, a network of organizations dedicated to being a watchdog and catalyst for sustainable coffee, to help build a movement towards a more sustainable and just coffee industry.
We joined the Child Labor Coalition to join the fight against child labor in coffee and beyond.
🔜 Coming Soon
- New petitions!
- More investigations!
- More litigation!
- Shareholder resolutions!
- More white papers!
- Coffee/deforestation maps!
- AND pesticide research!
This is just the beginning. Thank you for standing with us in the fight for a just, sustainable coffee industry.
With gratitude,
—The Coffee Watch Team
P.S. Want to help us keep the pressure on? Donate now. Volunteer. Sign these petitions. Host a screening. And please, follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Blue Sky, Youtube, inform, and X.