Now four years ago President Obama signed a piece of legislation called the Dodd-Frank Act. Most of it had to do with the tighter regulation of the financial sector. But tucked away at the back of the act Section 1502 there's something completely different. It was an attempt to eliminate or at least limit the use of so-called conflict minerals, things like gold, tungsten, tin and tantalum, in the manufacture of consumer electronics. Many such minerals come from Africa, from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Under the terms of the act, US-listed companies will need to demonstrate to the Securities and Exchange Commission that they've exercised due diligence in trying to ensure minerals they use have not been sold to the benefit of armed groups. Well there's nothing to actually stop a company using conflict minerals but any company wanting to label its products conflict-free will have to undergo an independent audit. Computer chip maker Intel is one firm which says it's already doing everything required by Dodd-Frank. The company's Caroline Duran says she and her team have spent the last five years checking the provenance of the minerals they use.
We do it by mapping the supply chain to try to understand where the minerals come from. And we get to a point in the supply chain, which is the smelter and the smelter is after that it's hard to trace. At the smelter you can trace the source of origin. So our efforts have been focusing on an audit process, starting with really strong management systems within the supply chain to say "we care about this issue and we wanna do the right thing".
