Date of publication: August 6, 2008
Source: Corporate WatchDog Radio
Author: Brian Campbell
Excerpt from article:
By Brian Campbell
...Forty percent of the World’s cocoa is produced in the Cote d’Ivoire, West Africa. The US Department of State has estimated more than one hundred thousand children work under “the worst forms of child labor,” in that country. Some 10,000 or more are victims of human trafficking or enslavement.
In 2001, the large cocoa companies – like Mars, Hershey, Cargill, and Archer Daniels Midland –bowed to increasing pressure from consumers and politicians to clean up their supply chain. They agreed to establish an industry-wide certification program by 2005 that would tell consumers which chocolate was produced without forced or child labor. It was a groundbreaking idea. A market-based approach to ending child labor would empower consumers to be a part of the solution.
Incredibly, the companies failed to meet both the 2005 deadline and a second extended deadline this past July. Instead, they passed the buck for ending child labor to the government of Cote D’Ivoire...