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Cocoa Companies Fail To Let Consumers Know Which Chocolate Is Produced Without Child Labor
Corporate WatchDog Radio
August 6, 2008
» Go to http://homepage.mac.com/sanfordlewisvideo/.Music/CWR-2008-08-06.mp3
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By Brian Campbell
Everybody loves chocolate, right? But do you know what went into making it? Not the products; the labor. For over 100 years, the cocoa in the chocolate we love to eat has been produced under some of the worst labor conditions in the world.
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.
The reasoning was sound. Time and again, economists have found that if consumers are given information about producers who don’t use child labor, those producers will be rewarded with higher sales and profits. And children who would have been enslaved will instead have a chance to have a childhood, to go to school, and to have a better life.
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.
The companies then pushed farmers to grow more cocoa. They’ve told the farmers that higher production would lift them out of poverty. But expanding cocoa production will likely just make farmers poorer-- by reducing the price companies pay for cocoa on the world market. More work for less pay won’t end poverty. Labor standards, encouraged by thoughtful buyers, will.
Congress has called on industries that use child labor, like cocoa, to use a market-based approach to ending child labor. In this year’s Farm Bill, Congress directed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to work with industry, labor experts, and agriculture experts. It wants them to design a voluntary program that will tell consumers which products are child labor-free. While no one certification program can truly guarantee a 100% child labor-free product, third party certification programs, such as Fair Trade certification can help cocoa farmers around the world boost their incomes, reinvest in their communities, and end the worst forms of child labor.
But we don’t have to wait. We can show the chocolate companies now that the market can work for poor cocoa farmers in Africa. By purchasing Fair Trade-certified chocolate bars, we can be part of the solution to help end child labor in Cote D’Ivoire. For more information on ethical cocoa companies and other steps to end child labor in cocoa farming, check out our Chocolate Company Scorecard at www.laborrights.org.
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