Levi's Vacates Better Cotton Initiative Board Seat. Is Xinjiang to blame?

Levi Strauss’s sustainability czar has exited the board of the Better Cotton Initiative, cutting short a four-year term that was scheduled to end next year, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing people close to the matter. BCI, which declined to “provide input on this topic,” updated its website early Friday to strike Levi’s from its so-called BCI Council. BCI’s leadership, members of the Geneva-based not-for-profit told the Wall Street Journal, remains deeply divided over its response to suspected human-rights abuses, including forced labor, in China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.