Mondelēz, the maker of Oreos, released its annual Snacking Made Right Report a few weeks before the company’s annual shareholder meeting, which will be held on May 21, 2025.
Rainforest Action Network’s Senior Forest Campaigner, Maggie Martin, issued the following statement:
“Once again, Mondelēz has missed a critical opportunity to prove to its investors—and the world—that it’s truly committed to ending deforestation and protecting human rights. While other companies are stepping up, Mondelēz continues to lag behind. Its current statement on deforestation doesn’t meet the strong standards set by others—it lacks a clear, credible plan to prevent deforestation, protect peatlands, and stop exploitation. As more consumers demand action, the pressure will keep growing until Mondelēz shows real progress through strong policies and actions to address human rights violations and deforestation in its supply chains.”
Furthermore, RAN found that Mondelēz has failed to make significant progress in requiring suppliers and business partners to uphold Human Rights including failing to recognize the important role of Human Rights Defenders and the necessity of ensuring they are not subject to violence, intimidation, and criminalization in the company’s (and its suppliers) operations, namely expansion into community lands. While Mondelēz states that it “expects” suppliers to follow its numerous guidelines, including its Human Rights Policy, Supplier and Partner Code of Conduct, Supplier Performance Expectations, and Supply Chain Expectations, the company fails to establish a clear requirement for suppliers to respect human rights or to adequately respond when violations occur.
The report reveals Mondelēz’s investment in an initiative aimed at addressing “the root causes of land rights issues in Indonesia”, demonstrating its commitment to addressing rights violations. However, Mondelēz must also take steps in-house to demonstrate a genuine intention to address rights violations across its supply chain. Critical steps, such as the adoption of a cross-commodity No Deforestation, No Peatland, No Exploitation (NDPE) policy, are notably absent from the ESG report.
Mondelēz’s 2025 Deforestation Free commitment is months away, and it is worrying that Mondelēz is relying on controversial tools, such as the No Deforestation, No Peatland, No Exploitation Implementation Reporting Framework (NDPE IRF), which was recently called out by RAN for enabling deforestation. Mondelēz has yet to issue a public response regarding the presence of illegal palm oil in its supply chain.
Lastly, Mondelēz reiterates its commitment to undertaking a forest footprint and now discloses it will use RAN’s methodology for the footprint exercise. RAN urges Mondelēz to adopt a timeline for completing the exercise and commit to publishing the forest footprint findings.