Slavery Around the World - Chocolate from Africa

All over the world poverty, false religious beliefs, broken families and illiteracy create a powerless class of people who become the prey of individuals who desire to profit and live off those they deem less valuable than themselves. Many times these powerless people are children. 

Have you eaten any chocolate in the last few days? Was it marked fair trade or fairly traded? If not there is a good chance that at least a percentage of it was produced by child slave labour. Much of the world's chocolate (43%) comes from one country - the Ivory Coast on the west coast of Africa (also known as Cote d' Ivoire). The cocoa farmers of the Ivory Coast can not afford to hire labor due to the low prices paid to them for the cocoa beans by the large chocolate producing companies. As a consequence they use the labor of their own children and also enslave other children and young boys to produce their crops. Most of the farmers and their workers have never tasted the final product - they can not afford to buy a bar of chocolate. 

Over 200,000 children are in either slavery or forced labor situations on small cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast and 12,000 of those children have been trafficked into the Ivory Coast mainly from other West African countries.

By buying  fair traded cocoa and chocolate products you can vote for change with your dollars. Asking for slave free and fairly traded products from your grocer is another way to influence change. Fairly traded chocolate can be found at Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Amazon.com and many other health food and specialty stores. Brands that declare their chocolate products to be 100% slave free include Clif Bar, Cloud Nine, Dagoba Organic Chocolate, Denman Island Chocolate, Gardners Candies, Green and Black's, Kailua Candy Company, Koppers Chocolate, L.A. Burdick Chocolates, Montezuma's Chocolates, Newman's Own Organics, Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company, Rapunzel Pure Organics, and The Endangered Species Chocolate Company.

Check out the links below for more information on slavery and trafficking in chocolate production.

http://www.chocolatework.com/chocolate-slavery.htm

http://vision.ucsd.edu/~kbranson/stopchocolateslavery/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_exploitation_in_the_chocolate_industry