August 30, 2007 - Continental Clothing Co. (asi/46410) has announced its latest stand on the state of Uzbekistan's child labor cotton-picking industry: As of this fall, the company is going 100% organic. The initiative makes Continental Clothing the first major clothing company to boycott cotton sales from Uzbekistan, the world's second largest exporter of cotton. To implement the large-scale switchover in inventory, Continental Clothing is purchasing 750 tons of organic cotton as part of its initial conversion. The company will now also label these garments with the "country of origin," not the "country of manufacture," as is usually the case.

"We're simply trying to do the right thing," Philip Charles, head of the company's United States division, says of the boycott. "We've educated ourselves about cotton agriculture and we don't like what we've learned."

Located in central Asia, Uzbekistan – a former Soviet Union republic – has been scalding in the international limelight for its treatment of child cotton laborers. With its approximately 800,000 tons of cotton exports each year, this industry reaps $1 billion (U.S. dollars) in annual revenue. According to a report on the Environmental Justice Foundation's Web site, hundreds of thousands of youths are forced to labor in Uzbekistan's cotton fields and forgo classroom education, with earnings reportedly ranging from 15 cents to $5 for a five-day period. "The responsibility is to our customers," Charles says. "If a customer had a choice between a T-shirt that was made using child labor in Uzbekistan and a garment that wasn't, I know which one they'd choose."

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