Our Stance on Child Labor

The Coca-Cola Company does not support, encourage or endorse any form of child labor in our operations throughout the system or in our supplier network. We have made progress in understanding and addressing the root causes of the child labor issue. We have incorporated rules against child labor into our Supplier Guiding Principles (SGP) program for direct suppliers of the Company, authorized suppliers to the Company and direct bottling partner suppliers, and all commercial agreements with direct suppliers require compliance with child labor laws.

Our system is one of the largest purchasers of sugar in the world and we share a responsibility for ensuring that the sugar we purchase is processed free of child labor. Any child labor allegation is a very serious issue that we fully investigate. Our Company conducts continuous assessments of all our operations and authorized suppliers -- including the sugar mills that supply our bottling plants and other areas of our business that are at high risk for child labor -- to ensure that strong policies and practices are in place to help avoid child labor.

Specifically in El Salvador, we have supported a multi-stakeholder initiative that removed thousands of children from sugarcane fields and enrolled them in education programs. Globally, we also have started several initiatives in various supplier locations to prevent and remove child labor. Prevention against child labor is also a key measure when we evaluate new suppliers throughout our global supply chain. See pages 19–20 of our 2007/2008 Sustainability Review and our case study on eliminating child labor for more details.