BRASÍLIA, January 25, 2026 — Brazil’s largest coffee cooperative, Cooxupé, has suspended five member growers caught using slave labour during the 2025 harvest. The five are among 15 coffee producers fined during inspections carried out by Brazil’s Ministry of Labour and Employment between April and August.
In all five cases, labour inspectors found workers subjected to degrading working and living conditions and restrictions on their freedom due to illegal debt—two of the four criteria that, under Brazilian law, define conditions analogous to slavery.
Cooxupé recorded the highest revenue in its history in 2024, receiving 6.6 million bags of coffee, 80% of which were exported. The cooperative ranks among Forbes’ 100 largest agribusiness companies in Brazil and supplies major international buyers, including Starbucks, identified as one of its main clients.
Jorge Ferreira dos Santos, coordinator of Adere-MG, an organisation that receives labour-rights complaints and alerts authorities, said that between 20% and 40% of the slave-labour cases handled by the group involve Cooxupé-affiliated growers.
Cooxupé said it blocks any member as soon as it receives official notice of labour-rights violations, halts deliveries from the producer, segregates any coffee already received, and returns it in full. The cooperative said its operations are based on respect for human dignity and social responsibility and that it runs a human-rights training programme.
Starbucks, contacted for comment, said it buys coffee from only “a small fraction” of Cooxupé’s more than 19,000 member farms and only from those verified under its C.A.F.E. Practices programme, which it described as including “robust audits”. The company did not clarify whether the farms cited by labour inspectors were, or had been, part of the programme, but said it takes “any allegation of inadequate working conditions extremely seriously” and is committed to responsible coffee sourcing.
On 24 June, 19 workers from Ceará, in Brazil’s north-east, were rescued while harvesting coffee at Fazenda São Thomaz in Caconde, São Paulo. The property belongs to coffee grower André Pereira Alves, a member of the Cooxupé cooperative. The workers were recruited in the municipality of Mauriti with promises of good wages and working conditions by a gato—the term commonly used for rural labour brokers.
According to an inspection report obtained by Repórter Brasil, the workers paid for their own transportation to the farm, a practice that violates Brazilian labour law. Inspectors identified debt, false promises and irregular transportation as elements consistent with human trafficking for labour exploitation.
Responding through his lawyer, Alves said he did not believe the situation met the legal definition of conditions analogous to slavery, arguing that the workers “were being paid amounts well above what most Brazilians receive” and that “they had a car available for transportation”. He added that, despite disagreeing with the classification, he complied with all requirements imposed by labour inspectors.
Two other properties in Minas Gerais were cited on 26 June. In Divisa Nova, inspectors rescued 47 workers—including a 16-year-old—who were harvesting coffee at Fazenda do Meio, owned by producer Nilceu Patrocínio Muniz Junior. According to the inspection report, the workers were paid with cheques that could only be cashed at a supermarket designated by the gato, preventing them “from freely disposing of their wages”.
In Passos, Minas Gerais, inspectors found a 72-year-old man and ten other workers subjected to conditions analogous to slavery at Fazenda Engenho Novo.
This is not the first time Cooxupé—responsible for roughly 10% of Brazil’s coffee exports—has been linked to slave labour in its supply chain. In April, Repórter Brasil reported that four cooperative members had been added to the federal government’s Registry of Employers who have subjected workers to conditions analogous to slavery, commonly known as the “Dirty List”.
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