In today’s business world, the rules for social responsibility are changing. Consumers increasingly want to know what companies are doing to address the key social issues of our day, from climate change to economic inequality and sexual harassment. As a result, the days when consumer-facing companies could turn a blind eye to worker exploitation and abuse in their suppliers’ operations are long gone. Instead, accountability, transparency and verifiable human rights protections are the table stakes for corporations wanting to do business in the 21st century.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ (CIW) Fair Food Program (FFP) is the gold standard for social responsibility in the food industry today. After decades of tireless organizing with consumers, farmworkers with the CIW have built a uniquely successful program of worker-led monitoring and enforcement that has ended many long-standing human rights violations — from forced labor to sexual violence — in the fields under its award-winning protections. The Fair Food Program’s success has made it the most recognized social responsibility program in the country today. The FFP received a Presidential Medal in 2015 for its “extraordinary success in fighting human trafficking” and a MacArthur “Genius” Award in 2017 for its “potential to transform workplace environments across the global supply chain,”, and was called one of the “most important social impact stories of the past century” by the Harvard Business Review.

That’s why all of the largest fast-food companies — McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, Taco Bell and Chipotle — along with nine other major food retailers, from Whole Foods to Walmart, have joined the Fair Food Program. For over a decade, those companies have partnered with the CIW, embracing the FFP’s transparency and proven protections. Yet today there is still one major fast-food company notably missing from that list: Wendy’s.

What is Wendy’s really selling to its consumers when it comes to social responsibility?