Is There Slavery in Your Chocolate?

Most likely.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. 

I was already vaguely aware that slavery was used in the production of chocolate, but recently I wrote a paper on the topic and I now feel much more qualified to speak on the subject. Here is my research paper, Reader's Digest version:

Most cocoa used in the largest chocolate brands comes from Africa, particularly Cote d'Ivorie. Investigations have revealed that the cocoa industry in the following countries uses child labor or forced labor:

 Cameroon

Cote d'Ivorie

Ghana

Guinea

Nigeria
Sierra Leone 

Want proof? Good for you, here are some links:

The U.S. Department of Labor's List of  Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor

BBC News, 2007- Child Cocoa Workers Still Exploited

The Payson Center for International Development's report on efforts made by the chocolate industry to eliminate child labor in their supply chain (hint: they haven't done it)

Now, are you skeptical that "child labor" is inherently a bad thing? Are we perhaps wrongly projecting my western view of children and work onto other cultures?

Maybe.  But the kinds of child labor we're talking about eliminating are known as the "Worst Forms of Child Labor"as defined by the International Labor Organization, a department of the U.N. Here is what is considered Worst Forms of Child Labor:

(a) all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom and forced or compulsory labour, including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict;
(b) the use, procuring or offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography or for pornographic performances;
(c) the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs as defined in the relevant international treaties;
(d) work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children.

I mean, that's pretty bad. It is also the type of thing that the chocolate industry has been promising to do its part to eradicate for the past 10 years.

The Chocolate Manufacturers Association, which represents some of the top companies in the industry (Hershey, M&M Mars, Nestle, See's, etc etc etc) stepped in in 2001 when the United States congress was about to pass a bill requiring them to label chocolate "Slave Free" if it used no child labor. They came up with a compromise, known as the Harkin-Engel Protocol, in which the industry promised to work to end child slavery in their supply line.

Want to see the CEO's signatures on this promise? They're right here.

The companies who signed this protocol have repeatedly missed the deadlines to fulfill their promises. The Payson Center, which oversees compliance with the agreement, said in 2011 that the chocolate industry had not completely fulfilled any of the the promises made.

Perhaps the companies can't regulate their suppliers. Maybe we're making the wrong people responsible for the problem. That could be true. Global trade is certainly not simple. 

 But then again, plenty of other companies have managed to keep slavery out of their chocolate, largely by using Fair Trade certified chocolate, which has certain standards that producers must meet. Whether or not Fair Trade certified is the way to go is open for debate- but it is one way of ensuring that a suppliers are not committing  labor abuses.

                         

And Chocolate companies do not have to use the Fair Trade system. One of the agreements of the Protocol was that the industry could come up with it's own third-party verified labeling system. Maybe something like this:

That's going to be all for Part one of this. Next week, or sometime soon when I feel like it, I'll talk about current consumer campaigns and companies committed to fair trade chocolate, and how to buy slavery free chocolate.