So these children are driven to work due to poverty right? So isn't the answer to try to address that rather than to say "stop using cocoa harvested by child labor?" Like I'm totally pro-non-child-labor-cocoa, but wouldn't the kids just get other jobs then?
this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
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A good start to fixing the poverty is if companies making obscene amounts of money from their labor start fairly paying people in these areas.
🤣... sorry, but since when have any companies paid fairly in any areas?
That is why I'm buying chocolate made in Africa, rather than chocolate made from beans from Africa. That way the value is generated there and not here.
How does one do that?
Does it affect the kids?
Because, being from Africa, they are immune to abusing these kids? They can still source from these farms, no matter where your money ends up.
It's not about child abuse, it's about not making enough money so they need their children to help out. If they get a fair salary, they don't need to exploit their kids for labor.
It's not an either-or situation. Companies should still be criticized and stopped from exploiting children.
their parents also work harvesting cocoa. The reason they are poor despite being working a lot is that they are not paid enough for their work.... by Mars (or Nestle, Mondelez, etc)
Yes, and this is a vestige of the destabilization of African nations by white colonial powers to have and sell enslaved people. What boggles my mind is that paying a living wage to workers would increase the price of Mars chocolate slightly if at all (corporate profits could eat the difference) but the people with the power to make those decisions are like "nope! We could get even more profits by paying less for raw materials!" so they seek and/or create even more disenfranchised workers. Doesn't get more disenfranchised than a 5 year old that has to go to work to help the family make ends meet, but I'm sure the corporate overlords are cooking something up as we speak.
That would imply that first world nations empower them, not engage in societal subterfuge via overt and covert subjugation tactics.
John Oliver did a great show on chocolate around Halloween time. It showed just how much child labor goes into producing chocolate for the world, when almost no one really spends any time thinking about where it comes from.
Here's the source for anybody curious:
https://youtu.be/FwHMDjc7qJ8?si=UdaMXa7uJTqgZniu
Def worth a watch. Tony's chocolate looks like a good alternative.
Thanks for posting the video, I was on mobile and was already late on my break.
The CNN clip in that video, is even better: the reporter gives the guys a bar of chocolate, and they go all "ohh, it tastes so great!". Then he asks them if they'll give any to the children, to which the guy answer "they can have the wrappers"... at which point the reporter produces out a second bar saying "don't worry, give them this"... still, I don't recall the kids getting any.
I enjoyed the part with the other journalist where he was on the phone with someone who hung up when the reporter pointed out that kids could stop working if their parents made more money. Insane that he was defending that practice.
What a surprise.
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In the blistering heat, CBS News found children in Ghana as young as 5 years old using machetes nearly as big as themselves to harvest the cocoa beans that end up in some of America's most-loved chocolates.
Our team traveled across Ghana's remote cocoa belt to visit small subsistence farms that supply the U.S. chocolate giant Mars, which produces candies including M&Ms and Snickers.
We found children working at each one of the farms — despite the company's vow to have systems in place to eradicate child labor in its supply chain by 2025.
He and other supervisors told CBS News they were under pressure to produce names, often with only 24 hours' notice, and he said the companies never verify the information.
An employee at the warehouse, who is not being named by CBS News, said child labor was "an offense" in the country, but he could not guarantee all the cocoa handled at the facility was produced without it.
Terry Collingsworth, a human rights lawyer in the U.S., has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit alleging consumer fraud against American chocolate companies including Mars.
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