Before slipping those chocolate bars into your children’s stockings, or picking up a bag of chocolate coins for your dreidel game, or baking some holiday cookies and treats, please take a moment to consider the consequences of buying the cheapest chocolates you can find. Unfortunately, there’s a very dark side to chocolate. Cheap chocolate is cheap because it is harvested by slaves, child slaves to be exact.
Every mindless purchase of Nestlé, Toblerone, Perugina, Dove, Mars, and Herseys, continues the cycle of child slave labor in West Africa, where 70% of the world’s chocolate is grown. If instead, you would like to see this practice actually eliminated, as opposed to simply talked about (as in the 2001 Cocoa Protocol that all major manufacturers signed), it’s time to put your dollars to work in the right place.
Actively seeking out fair trade certified chocolates is a start, but one must be careful, as Nestlé and Toblerone, have tried to skirt certification requirements by only swapping out 1% of their production and then labeling it as slave free under an in-house label. If it doesn’t carry the official Fair Trade Certification, is not organic, doesn’t state its origin on the label, then it was probably harvested by a small boy aged five to 12 who was stolen from his family in Mali.
The undercover documentary, The Dark Side of Chocolate, exposes the outrageous lies of the chocolate manufacturers who are in deep denial about the reality of slavery in their supply chain. Also, that despite laws, public outcry, political action, the fact remains that child slaves are harvesting those cocoa pods with machetes against their will and beaten if they do not comply. After watching that movie I will never purchase a Nestlé or Herseys chocolate product again. This is a documentary that is definitely worth 45 minutes of your time.
I want to avoid the bitter taste of slavery in my chocolate confections. Is it possible to do that? Yes, in fact it is! There are companies who are actually paying adult workers to grow and harvest their cocoa. They receive a fair wage and are treated ethically. Those companies charge more for their chocolate and ground cocoa. The sweet taste of social justice is worth the added cost.
FairTrade USA, the official certification organization, which is based in Oakland, has a list of of 55 different chocolate companies that are not relying on children to pick the beans. You can check their website here. Additionally, if you want more clarity, check out this UC San Diego site on how to stop chocolate slavery.
Ellis Jones, whom I mentioned in my has a pretty clear cut grading system on chocolates based not only on their use of slaves, but additionally how they treat the environment. Not surprisingly, the companies who are treating people as disposable, are treating the rainforest the same way. Nestlé comes out on the bottom of his list too. His corporate hero among chocolate makers is Endangered Species which sources its chocolate from small family owned farms, has a LEED certified production plant in addition to only selling fair trade, organic, certified slave free chocolates. Oh, and by the way, their chocolate tastes amazing too. My children love their milk chocolate bars, while I love their Extreme Dark Chocolate bar. To each her own.
Another favorite ethical chocolate producer, Divine Chocolates, where according to their website and FairTradeUsa, “Not only do the Kuapa Kokoo farmers’ receive a Fair Trade price for their cocoa, but they also own 45% of the company, and therefore have a direct influence over how the company is run and share in the profits from the chocolate,” is another A+ company.
Why are the biggest companies using slaves when smaller companies are not? According to John Robbins, “Companies like Mars, Hershey, and Nestle often say that there is no way they can control the labor practices of their suppliers. But there are other chocolate companies who manage to do so, and it would seem that if the bigger companies really wanted to reform problems in the supply chain, they have the power and ability to do so.” With profits in the tens of millions per company, it would seem that some of that money could in fact be spent to actually pay the laborers to pick the beans.
“At present, no organic cocoa beans are coming from Ivory Coast, so organic chocolate is unlikely to be tainted by slavery. Newman’s Own Organics is one of the largest of the slavery-free companies. The company’s chocolate is purchased through the Organic Commodity Project in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It comes from Costa Rica where the farms are closely monitored.” Also according to John Robbins.
Cocoa bean harvesting is particularly dangerous for children to be doing, not only because of the machetes they must wield, but the enormous amounts of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers that are dumped on the non-organic plantations. Buying organic, fair trade chocolate is far better for our world than any cheap candy bar will ever be, and will undoubtedly mean happier holidays for the workers as well as your family.
@Kim: Your statement that non-Fair Trade chocolate is "...*probably* harvested by a small boy aged five to 12 who was stolen from his family in Mali" (emphasis mine) seems exaggerated. I am certain that the practice is not as prevalent as you suggest. Young children in the African desert face a pretty terrible plight, but it is not because I enjoy an occasional Snickers bar. It is because they were born in the African desert....
[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/18/BU4J1MCRA3.DTL] Perhaps the chocolate industry has better monitoring.
I think the broader issue is child labor. At some level, a 10 year old sent to work by his parents is almost as much a slave as someone "sold" as a worker (kid doesn't get the money in either case). Child labor is not pretty, I just think it often beats the alternatives (e.g., death by starvation). If you have a "zero tolerance" policy for injustice in the supply chain, you may need to go off the grid.
Shall I be able to count on women to return any chocolate they receive on Feb. 14, 2012, that's not been certified as slave labor free? Here's your chance to organize a movement, Ladies. If the people consuming the majority of chocolate are also the leaders at rearing children and if they don't have a problem consuming chocolate produced by slave labor, then why should those of us who don't consume chocolate find this issue to be relevant? And, if the Ladies of America surprise me by starting an initiative to change consumption patterns, what shall become of these children? Will the growers all of a sudden begin paying them? Or will these children simply be shuttled off to perform some other labor? Perhaps the solution isn't attacking the chocolate industry but finding solutions to the conditions (social, political, and economic) that encourage child labor practices. But, hey, if I skip a Hershey's bar I can feel virtuous about helping protect children. Maybe I'll stop by the mall instead. I wonder if Kathy Lee makes any clothing for men...
I would also humbly submit that the economically efficient (as well as morally right) thing to do would be to satisfy your chocolate cravings according to your palette and wallet, and send the savings (versus the much more expensive PC-compliant product) to a reputable charity fighting for economic development of third world economies. I am not saying that this conclusion will always apply to this type of situation, but here the signal/noise ratio from a Snickers boycott seems particularly bad.
PS to P Whitbeck, I have that tape (yes, tape), and it's great. But Ethiopia is 3000 miles from Ivory Coast, and Ivory Coast is not in a desert.
Also, the article claimed that the slaves in Ivory Coast come from Mali, which is (at least in part), in the desert....
I would characterize rural Africa to be in the same or worse position from a viable labor market perspective and they are surviving the best way they have. Their and their offspring's own labor. Just because a child working doesn't convince me it is some evil crime against humanity. It may be the only way those kids eat. But sitting in the comfy evironment of some over capitalized non-profit in some trendy high rise in NYC the perceived injustice is calculated and sold to the PC/Liberals in this country to fund their $250K a year Director's post. And the victimization industry marches on...........
Historically, Ethiopia's feudal and communist economic structure has always kept it one rainless season away from devastating droughts. Ethiopia has great potential to be a producer, as it is one of the most fertile countries in Africa. According to the New York Times, Ethiopia "could easily become the breadbasket for much of Europe if her agriculture were better organized."
If anyone is interested at a more informative take on the current state of affairs in Africa, check out this piece from The Economist magazine just a few weeks ago: www.economist.com/node/21541015
In the last few decades, I think many of their ailments have been self imposed. Am I a racist? Are facts racist?
Then comes the start of the Cold War and then the various movements towards independence among the colonies. The US and USSR pick their favorites and many corrupt regimes are given life support. This did not only happen in Africa. To deny that modern day Africans do not face unfair challenges imposed upon them by colonial governments and their Cold War successors is not realistic.
Filipinos, Indians, Indonesians, Chileans, Czechs, Slovaks, Estonians, among others, have been improving their lot economically, socially, politically, in the last decade or two. To suggest that Africans cannot do the same, simply because they're African - and, mostly, black - is, again IMO, racist. And that was what Peter implied.
This discussion says a whole lot more about you than it does me.
You're the racist and bigot. My friends will agree.
I'll assume that this is a rhetorical question and continue on with me chosen NGO's work (largely women-led) to end trafficking.
You guys should chill and have some chocolates. If we can't decide which candy is morally permissible to eat, we're not going to save Africa. That said, in complex situations, I favor individual effort and responsibility instead of hand-outs based on guilt for prior sins. Therefore, I have just used Kiva to grant $1000 in microloans to family-run cocoa farms (one in Africa and one in Peru). I hope they don't use too much of my money to buy slaves.
The CNN Freedom Project sent correspondent David McKenzie into the heart of the Ivory Coast - the world’s largest cocoa producer - to investigate what's happening to children working in the fields. Chocolate’s Child Slaves premieres Friday 20th January 2012: 8.00pm GMT, 9.00pm CET. http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/12/chocolates-child-slaves/