Oct 11, 2021
Toxic Cashews: The darker side of the Cashew Nut
As one of the world’s most popular nuts, demand for the Cashew nut has grown despite the advent of COVID 19. The cashew industry is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 4.23%, reaching a market size of USD 6.932 billion by 2025. Having always been one of the more popular nuts, demand for cashews further grew due to its common use in plant-based diets, from cashew milk and nut butters to vegan cheese.
The toxic part of the Cashew Nut
The cashew nut originated from Brazil but is now mainly cultivated in East Africa as well as Eastern Asian countries including Vietnam, India and Indonesia. The tree that bears fruit to the ‘cashew apple’ is an evergreen tree. Its fruit, the peduncle, i.e the cashew apple, is a pseudo fruit consisting of a nut shell, which holds the cashew kernel. As the cashew nut is presented unshelled to consumers, little is known about its shell, which contains a corrosive liquid that can cause vicious burns.
The caustic nature of the cashew shell may seem distant to consumers like us, who can access packaged cashews raw, roasted or in its many delicious variations, but the implications to cashew farmers and nut shellers are all too real. Although the bulk of cashews are cultivated in East Africa, cashews are often shipped to countries such as Vietnam and India to be unshelled.
Firsthand interviews with cashew shellers in India by The Daily Mail uncovered that their hands are frequently ‘burned’ by the toxic acid, and these burns extend to other areas of their bodies as their cashew acid squirts everywhere when unshelled.
Pushpa Gandhi, a 30-year-old woman who supports her family as a cashew sheller explains:
“Today when we go home and wash, we will see the boils on our skin. It takes about a week for them to heal. But as the old ones heal, new ones keep coming.”
The option to use gloves may not always be available to cashew shellers, and even when it is, they mostly opt not to use it because it affects their dexterity, in turning affecting their efficiency and the amount they are paid. Apparently, even inhaling the dust covering the shell irritates the throat, and workers involved in the initial roasting process complain of tight breathing and chest pain.
Human Rights abuses in the Cashew Nut Industry
The human rights abuses in the cashew nut industry became more widely known after a Human Rights Watch Report in 2011, which uncovered forced labour and punishment in the Vietnamese cashew nut industry. The report found that behind the scenes of Vietnam’s ‘Cashew Kingdom’, Binh Phuoc, many rehabilitation centres are exploiting their ‘patients’ for forced labour, providing them with cashew nuts to unshell daily and punishing them if they refuse. According to the report, 40,000 people are imprisoned in the 123 work centres across Vietnam.
The report led some US and European companies to act against abuses in the supply chain by conducting more due diligence and pressuring suppliers to improve working conditions. In 2019, the EU and Vietnam Free Trade agreement (EVFTA) was set up to enable direct exports of Vietnamese agricultural products to the EU. The agreement means Vietnam’s agricultural industry will be supplemented by expertise and technology from European companies, which in turn should improve labour conditions and management processes.
Vietnam’s Cashew Nut processors have also taken it upon themselves claims to upgrade their machinery, to improve competitiveness, solve labour shortages and address hygiene and safety concerns during processing. In the past, Cashew Nut Processors had to import expensive machines from Europe, meaning some choose not to use machines despite their efficiency. To solve this problem, Cashew Nut Processors have collaborated with local engineers to create more affordable equipment.
The Vietnam made shelling machines have enabled enterprises to save billions of Dong and reduce production costs. The need for human labour has also reduced, the machines have helped cut out about 70% of the labour force required in the shelling and cutting phases. Although this may remove an important source of income for some cashew shellers, it at least provides for safer working conditions for workers who work in the processing facilities.
Despite some positive strides, the complex web of intermediaries and retail pressure means that the cashew nut industry is still wrought with inequalities. An investigation by the Norwegian Ethical Trading Initiative found that although ‘working conditions were better than expected’, there were still many cases of illegal labour and ‘numerous health and safety issues’. Further, The Daily Mail’s 2019 article found that in India, another top exporter of cashew nuts, workers, mostly women, are ‘employed without contracts, with no guarantee of a steady income, no pension or holiday pay.’ Workers are mostly paid according to the kilograms of shelled cashews they produce daily.
Pushpa, one of the female shellers interviewed, earns just 70p per kilogram of shelled nuts. This means that even if she reaches an output of 10kg a day, her total earnings would amount to only £7 daily.
UK based charity Traidcraft remarked that European retailers’ continuous efforts to lower prices is a key reason for the low wages at the end of the supply chain. Although circumstances differ according to country and province, it is common for nut suppliers to resort to unregulated labour to reduce production costs. In India, in an effort to lower costs, many nut suppliers have opted to exploit cashew shellers in the Kerala state where working conditions are less regulated. Pushpa is just one of the many thousands of female labourers in Kerala, who are living in poverty and working to support their families.
What can companies and retailers do to ameliorate this situation?
FMCG companies and retailers importing cashew nuts can increase due diligence in their cashew nut supply chains and halt collaboration with suppliers who are knowingly exploiting workers.
“If cashew importers want to ensure that their supply chains are not tainted with forced labor and abuse, they need to very closely scrutinise where they source their products,” says Joseph Amon, Director of HRW Health & Human Rights Division
Working closely with suppliers to improve educational and economic opportunity will also benefit the workers, and companies reputation with consumers. For example, New Zealand’s Olam Food Ingredients (OLI) launched a ‘Cashew Nut Trail’ which offers more transparency and invests in farmers by providing educational and economic opportunities.
It is also encouraging to see larger retailers’ including Sainsbury’s, Asda and Tesco voluntarily sign up to organisations such as Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI)[1], thus committing to foster more responsible business practices collectively.
[1] The UK’s ETI is an independent body with an aim to foster responsible business practices through ‘decisive and collaborative action’.
Do we have any power as consumers?
As only 3% of the world’s cashews are ethically traded, not all consumers will have easy access to these cashews. In addition to buying from fair trade brands (listed below), consumers can also conduct their own due diligence by making inquiries about the origins of the cashews if they purchase from smaller retailers, or even by sharing information about the ‘darker side’ of the cashew story with their community to raise awareness.
- Equal Exchange
- Just Cashew
- King Agro Processors
- Lemberona
- Liberation Nuts
- Subraya
- Tolaro Global
- Traidcraft
Consumers who purchase cashew nut butters, cashew milks or other cashew-based products can likewise check those products for ethical certifications (i.e B Corp, Fairtrade, Fair for Life), as brands who have such certifications in place are generally more aware of the environmental and social impact of their products.
The cashew nut industry echoes many other agricultural crop industries, with its opaque supply chains and instances of modern slavery. To facilitate a fairer, more transparent cashew nut industry, it seems like the solution is not to halt consumption, but to increase monitoring and support the farmers more directly by providing better economic opportunities.
