How could chocolate possibly be more delicious than it already is

8/7/2019 How could chocolate possibly be more delicious than it already is

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Fair Trade Month:Chocolate Edition

Why we need Fair Trade chocolate: Child labor, forced labor, and child trafficking in thecocoa industry are rampant. In West Africa, especially in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, children

are forced to harvest cocoa for long hours, kept out of school, and paid little or nothing at all

for their work. They are abused, exploited, and suffer lasting physical and psychologicalinjuries. Cocoa farmers use child labor because it's cheap, and it allows them to pass that

savings onto distributors and buyers. Buyers look for cheap cocoa because major chocolate

companies want to buy the cheapest cocoa available. And chocolate companies are buying

bargain basement cocoa because consumers like you and me are looking for cheap chocolate.

Fair Trade cocoa helps end that cycle. If consumers buy more Fair Trade chocolate,

companies will buy more Fair Trade cocoa. And in order to be the suppliers of that cocoa,

farm owners will need to get Fair Trade certified. That means getting rid of children and

How could chocolate

possibly be more delicious

than it already is??

For now, chocolate is a

bitter sweet

y 284,000 childrentoil in abusive laborconditions in West

Africas cocoa fields

y Cocoa companies payprices so low that

many cocoa

farmers cannot

meet their families

basic needs

But we can fix all

that...with Fair Trade

certified chocolate:

y Forced and abusivechild labor are

prohibited

y Farming families earna price that is

adequate to meet

their basic human

needs

y Environmentallysustainable

production methods

are required

Take Action

Online, in your own community, or even just when

youre buying chocolate!

Ifevery single one of us takes just a minute or two for an

online fax action or more time to take action in our

communities, together we WILL end child slavery in the

cocoa fields.


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slave laborers, hiring free adults (sometimes the kids' parents), and paying them a livingwage. Families in the community have more money, children are in school, and and you're

eating slave-free chocolate.

Where to find Fair Trade chocolate: Fair Trade chocolate is increasingly available at

grocery stores and markets around the country. Whole Foods and Trader Joe's both have a

pretty big selection of Fair Trade chocolate bars, hot chocolate mix, and even chocolate-hazelnut spread (a la Nutella). But if you can't find a place to pick up some Fair Trade

chocolate near you, here are some popular brands available online:

y Divine Chocolatey Equal Exchangey Green and Black'sy Theo Chocolatey Sweet Earth Chocolates

How to promote Fair Trade chocolate: Child and slave labor in the chocolate industry willcontinue as long as major chocolate companies are looking for cheap cocoa at any price. You

can tell big chocolate CEO's we want Fair Trade chocolate, and we want it now!

Tasked with providing Congress with an annual, impartial assessment of chocolate industry

efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labor from the cocoa industry, the Payson Centerfor International Development at Tulane University released its fourth annual report. The

report is currently the best place to learn about ongoing abuses on cocoa farms and to find anan impartial assessment of the efforts companies have made to improve conditions. The new

report provides upsetting evidence that little progress has been made and backs up thearguments frequently made by advocates.

The new report identifies the ongoing exploitation of labor rights in the cocoa sector

including the worst forms of child labor, forced labor and trafficking. New research related to

the trafficking of young workers from Burkina Faso and Mali found that most of them moved

to Cote d'Ivoire without their natural parents or guardians. Virtually all respondents in the

survey of migrant workers experienced the worst forms of child labor including: verbal,

physical and sexual harassment; restrictions of their freedom of movement; performing

hazardous work, including land clearing and burning; carrying heavy loads; spraying

pesticides; and using machetes, among other dangerous activities. At the same time, border

police and guards in Cote dIvoire and Ghana receive almost no training in dealing with child

trafficking and are unaware of policies and intervention strategies related to dealing with

child trafficking. Unsurprisingly, only a miniscule percentage of respondents who had

experienced trafficking and the worst forms of child labor benefited from any sort ofintervention or assistance.

The Tulane University report also analyzes the progress made by the cocoa industry on each

aspect of the Harkin-Engel Protocol and found that overall there was an uneven and

incomplete implementation of the agreement. The Protocol was a voluntary agreement signed

by major chocolate companies in 2001 that committed them to certify that the worst forms of

child labor were not used in the production of their chocolate. The report recommends that

chocolate companies increase their volume of cocoa that is certified by independent programs


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outside of the "certification" program developed under the Harkin-Engel Protocol, like FairTrade.

The report also investigates the work of industry-funded programs that are implemented on

the ground in West Africa for the purpose of eliminating child labor and improving the lives

of cocoa farmers. The main entity developed through the Harkin-Engel Protocol to fund

programs on the ground like this is the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI). In investigatingthe ICI, the research team found:

y While Tulanes research and that of the West African governments confirmed the presenceof forced adult labor in the cocoa sector, no remediation interventions targeting this abuse

is in place in either Cote dIvoire orGhana;

y ICI programs in Cote dIvoire cover a mere 2.29% of cocoa growing communities and 3% ofcocoa growing communities in Ghana. As a result, the industrywould need to spend 42.5

times the amount to date in Cote dIvoire and 28.8 times the current amount in Ghana in

order to achieve the goals it has established for the end of this year;

y While the ratio has shifted recently, ICIs aggregate operating-to-program expenditure ratiobetween 2002 and 2009 was 52:48. The Better Business Bureaurecommends that charitable

organizations spend at least 65% of total expenses on program activities;y From 2001 through 2009, surveyed organizations in Ghana received only $4.3 million USD

from industry partners (less than government and other stakeholders combined) and

surveyed organizations in Cote dIvoire received only $1.2 million USD in the same time

period while government and other stakeholders provided over four times as much funding

combined. Meanwhile, global chocolate sales in 2008 totaled US $62.1 billion.

The findings of the report support the demands that advocates have been making of chocolatecompanies for years. Earlier this month, four organizations released a report focusing on

Hershey's corporate social responsibility policies and recommended that the companyincrease its sourcing of Fair Trade Certified cocoa. The Tulane report notes that almost all

major chocolate companies are shifting toward certified cocoa and encourages this

development, but Hershey is lagging behind competitors in this area.

The report should be a wake-up call to companies like Hershey that more responsiblepurchasing policies are urgently needed. You can check out more highlights from the report

online here. Or, you can tell big chocolate CEOs that we want Fair Trade cocoa now.

Chocolate: The Bitter Truth

Reporter: BBC

Broadcast: 03/05/2010

Cocoa beans are the basic ingredients of chocolate. They are one of the most heavily

traded commodities in the world. In Europe, major chocolate makers have signed up to

Fairtrade programs, claiming some of their products are made without abusive labour

practices. Now the BBC's Paul Kenyon, posing as a cocoa bean buyer, puts those claims

to the test, revealing that despite Fairtrade's best efforts unscrupulous cocoa suppliers

still try and cheat the system.

*****************************************************


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His name is Fatao. He is just 12 years old and each day he works with a machete harvestingcocoa beans on a farm in Ghana. The hours are long, the work is dirty and exhausting and he

is paid no money. But the beans he harvests underpin a massive industry that nets companies,in the developed world, millions and millions of dollars.

His situation is not unique. Across parts of Africa thousands of children, some less than ten

years of age, are forced to work for little or no pay to harvest cocoa beans. Some aretrafficked and moved from country to country to work illegally. Their treatment breaks

international labour laws and yet in many cases very little is done to stop this modern day

slavery.

Major chocolate makers acknowledge there are problems involving the use of children. In the

United States, after a major political campaign, companies including Mars and Nestle agreed

to sign up to a six point plan to protect children in the chocolate industry. Nine years on

though there is still no logo on U.S. chocolate stating which brands are free of child labour.

For some activists, including Terry Collingsworth from International Rights Advocates, this

is a completely unacceptable situation:

"Well I think anyone involved in it would have to admit that it's been a complete failure, and

what it has done is given these cocoa companies several years of cover."

In the United Kingdom 10 chocolate bars from different companies now have a Fairtrade

logo. For chocolate lovers that logo is supposed to guarantee children have not been

employed illegally in the making of the chocolate.

But does the Fairtrade label applied to those chocolates in Britain really guarantee that? Totest that question BBC reporter Paul Kenyon went undercover trying to trace the beans that

went into Fairtrade products. What he found will shock many chocolate lovers. In a numberof locations he found the cocoa bean suppliers approved by the Fairtrade initiative did in fact

use child labour. Some were exposed by a Fairtrade audit, others were exposed by the BBC

investigation.

Harriet Lamb from the Fairtrade Foundation made it clear she was shocked by the

revelations:

"We're extremely concerned about your findings and obviously the first priority must be to

make sure always that the children concerned are taken care of, and that their safety and

their future is looked after. And we have then launched an investigation on the ground

together with the farmers to understand why this problem occurred, where it occurred, and to

see what we can do to prevent it happening in the future."

Not content to simply point out the shortcomings in the system reporter Paul Kenyon then

confronts the child trafficker of "cocoa slaves", who took 12 year old Fatao from his home in

Burkina Faso to work in Ghana. He calls on the local police and forces the man into handing

over the young boy and then manages to re-unite him with his mother.

It is perhaps a small piece of good news, but it does not hide the fact that right now bags of

cocoa beans produced by children are being mixed with "legal" produce. According to the

people buying and selling cocoa there are very few checks and balances and very little


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foolproof labelling to show how a product has been produced. That means the chocolate baryou eat today might be satisfying - but is it costing a small child their freedom and their

future?

How could chocolate possibly be more delicious than it already is

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