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Bill Would Require Companies To Highlight Anti-Trafficking Practices

The legislation aims to root out human trafficking across global supply chains.

Two lawmakers this week introduced legislation that aims to root out human trafficking across global supply chains.

The Business Supply Chain Transparency on Trafficking and Slavery Act would require publicly owned companies with more than $100 million in global receipts to disclose efforts to combat those practices in their filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Read more: Three ways to gain full visibility and control of supply chain operations.

The bill's authors — Reps. Carolyn Maloney, D-New York, and Chris Smith, R-New Jersey — cited a State Department report on trafficking, slavery and child labor, which said governments and businesses alike should demand greater transparency in supply chains that can reach far beyond their borders.

“There is no question that many goods being sold to American consumers are produced with slave labor, and we have a moral obligation to do something about it,” Maloney said in a statement.

An Associated Press report earlier this year said slavery is prominent in the seafood industry, while an article in The Wall Street Journal this week pointed to worker abuses in the palm oil industry in Malaysia.

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