Revelations about child labour are common across various industries, but they are especially prevalant in the context of luxury goods. The issue of child labour, often hidden within opaque supply chains, plagues many developing nations, making consumers unwittingly complicit. The fragrance industry is now under scrutiny for its labour practices .
An investigation by the BBC, which began last year, revealed that children were reportedly working to harvest ingredients for fragrances from two major brands, Lancôme and Aerin Beauty. These findings were featured in the BBC's documentary, Perfume's Dark Secret. The documentary reveals that during the jasmine harvest season in the summer of 2023, children as young as five were found working in the jasmine fields that supply some global brands through Egyptian factories.
The BBC discovered that jasmine flowers, a widely used fragrance ingredient, were being picked by minors. The fragrances implicated are Lancôme's Idôle L'Intense and Aerin's Ikat Jasmine and Limone Di Sicilia; both contain jasmine sourced from Egypt, which produces about half the world's supply of jasmine flowers, according to the BBC. Both brands' parent companies—L'Oréal and Estée Lauder, respectively—have codes of conduct designed to prevent child labour in their manufacturing processes.
The BBC noted the it is dificult to determine how many of the 30,000 people involved in Egypt's jasmine industry are children. However, during the filming, many adul.
