Public records are enough to trace forced-labor products directly to the shelves of national supermarkets.
April 25, 2026
Original Paper
Piercing the Corporate Opacity Myth
SSRN · 6635319
The Takeaway
Global corporations frequently claim that their supply chains are too complex to monitor for human rights abuses. Researchers used only publicly available data to link specific trafficking prosecutions to products sold in mainstream stores. This proves that supply chain opacity is a legal choice made by companies rather than a technical barrier. The technology and information to ensure ethical sourcing already exist and are accessible to anyone with a computer. Ignorance is no longer a valid excuse for the presence of modern slavery in a company's inventory.
From the abstract
<p>This Article challenges the prevailing assumption that agricultural supply chains are too “opaque” to trace labor exploitation from soil to the goods on supermarket shelves to hold downstream beneficiaries accountable. Through an empirical case study, law students at the University of Michigan successfully traced products harvested under forced labor in Operation Blooming Onion, one of the largest trafficking prosecutions in U.S. history, to national supermarket shelves using only publicly av