Child slavery is not something that comes to mind when enjoying a candy bar or chocolate chip cookies, but it is a very real fact that the chocolate companies that Americans know and love have slavery in their chocolate. So what does it mean that there is slavery in chocolate?
The Ivory Coast is the world’s leading producer of chocolate, and because of the high demand, many plantations there rely on slave labor to harvest the cocoa beans. Not just any slaves, but mainly children, who have been taken from nearby countries with the promise of opportunity only to discover when they arrive that their “opportunity” is actually forced labor in the cocoa plantations. Many of the children are brought from nearby Mali, and are trafficked across the border by motorcycle taxi (“Dark Side of Chocolate”).
Although the major chocolate companies deny that there is any way to control whether the cocoa they buy is harvested fairly or not, this is not true. If clothing manufacturers, who also contract out their work, can control whether child labor is used in the making of their products, then huge companies like Hershey’s, Mars, and Nestle can also control the conditions from which they buy their cocoa. The fact is, they simply do not care enough to make the necessary efforts required to keep child labor and slavery out of their cocoa products.
(As a side note, not all clothing carriers, like Wal-Mart, are willing to keep child labor out of their production)
With Valentine’s Day around the corner, many of my friends have asked me how to tell what chocolate is slavery-free. Although the “Fair Trade” label is a guarantee that there is no slavery in the cocoa production, companies without the Fair Trade certification can also be slavery free. Here is a list of some companies that do not use slave chocolate:
Taken from http://www.lindakreft.com/pdf/senufo.pdf
Chaine Confiseur Switzerland
Chapel Chocolates England
Chocolate by Jamieson, Ltd. USA
Chocolats Rohr Switzerland
Confections by Michael Recchiuti USA
Confiserie Tschirren Switzerland
Dagoba Organic Chocolate USA
(also Divine and Dubble) England
Denman Island Chocolate Canada
Koala King Chocolates Australia
L.A. Burdick Chocolates USA
Montezuma’s Chocolates England
Newman’s Own Organics USA
Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company Ghana, USA
Rapunzel Pure Organics USA
Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker USA
The Endangered Species Chocolate Co. USA
*This is not an exhaustive list, but it covers many of the companies that are slavery-free. If you are unsure of a company, a quick search for the company name and “slave chocolate” usually works. An excellent website that rates companies by their efforts to stop slavery is http://free2work.org/home
Companies that use slave chocolate, and are doing next to nothing about preventing child labor on the plantations from which they get their products are:
Chocolates by Bernard Callebaut
Guittard Chocolate Company
According to Robbins, “while most of these companies have issued condemnations of slavery, and expressed a great deal of moral outrage that it exists in the industry, they each have acknowledged that they use Ivory Coast cocoa and so have no grounds to ensure consumers that their products are slavery-free” (http://www.johnrobbins.info/blog/is-there-slavery-in-your-chocolate/).
So what can we do? We can stop buying chocolate from companies like Hershey’s and Nestle, but more importantly we can write the companies and let them know that consumers want child-slave free chocolate. Here are some websites for further research:
Amazing Documentary, “The Dark Side of Chocolate” (2010): http://www.documentariesTV.net/social/the-dark-side-of-chocolate-video_397b02b2a.html
Lots of great info on the situation: http://www.johnrobbins.info/blog/is-there-slavery-in-your-chocolate/
http://www1.american.edu/ted/chocolate-slave.htm
Another list of slave-free chocolate: http://www.chocolatework.com/slavery/chocolate-slavefree.htm
Hershey’s and their refusal to prevent child labor: http://greencelebrity.net/2010/11/16/dark-green-side-hershey-kisses-chocolate-business-not-sweet-fair-trade-labor/