As a requirement of a company’s affiliation, the FLA annually conducts independent assessments of a sample of each affiliated company’s supply chain. For Nestlé, which joined the FLA in 2012, this means monitoring the portion of its cocoa supply chain served by the Nestle Cocoa Plan, which represents around 20 percent of its total cocoa supply chain.
From October to December 2013, during the peak cocoa-harvesting season, FLA conducted 10 unannounced independent external monitoring visits to five cooperatives in the Ivory Coast supplying to Nestlé