Imagine a bar of chocolate, what feelings do you have? Its sweet, and of course delicious. sometime it can be a good stress buster. but, have you ever tried to looked at the dark side of this one little piece of chocolate? surprisingly, a blood of children, even death of children are in this small piece of chocolate. and we need to know why.According to recent documentary named " the dark side of chocolate" Department of Labor has estimated that in the ivory coast, there are over a 100,000 thousand 286,000 child slaves on the Ivory Coast children workers are involved in chocolate farm. The International Labor Organization estimates between 56 and 72 million African children work in agriculture, many in their own family farms. The seven largest cocoa-producing countries are Indonesia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Brazil, Ecuador, the Ivory Coast and Ghana. Those last two together account for nearly 60 percent of global cocoa production. its hard to figure out where they come from, and hard to identify them.
most of them were not educated so they cant even speak any language, and it only costs 100 dollars to 200 dollars per one child. According to international labor laws, this is strictly forbidden.
This is the way child labor to be widespread in the very regions of West Africa, particularly Ivory Coast.Ivory Coast, located on the southern coast of West Africa, is by far the world's largest supplier of cocoa beans, providing 43 percent of the world's supply.
hundreds of thousands of children are being purchased from their parents for a pittance, or in some cases outright stolen, and then shipped to Ivory Coast, where they are enslaved on cocoa farms. These children typically come from countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Togo.
11-to-16-years-old but sometimes younger, are forced to do hard manual labor 80 to 100 hours a week. They are paid nothing, receive no education, are barely fed, are beaten regularly, and are often viciously beaten if they try to escape. Most will never see their families again.
some of the major chocolate companies get most of its cocoa from West Africa. The company purchases the primary ingredient in its products from sources notorious for abusive labor practices including forced labor, human trafficking, and child slavery.
which makes Snickers and M&Ms had $30 billion in world sales in 2008 and Nestle's profits over $65 billion in annual sales; Nestle, Mars, Hershey, Cadbury and more companies produce their blood chocolate products that a person eats everyday not knowing that these chocolate bars were produced with chid slavery. Youngsters are being kidnapped and sold to these plantations to harvest product for these greedy chocolate companies.
While those children are unpaid and forced to labor under crue conditions on the cocoa farm, the profit of major cocoa companies from buying those cocoa has jumped in 54 percent . and they dont stop buying cocoas from there because it keeps its costs down and its profits up.
Although smaller chocolate companies in the U.S. are trying to buy fair trade cocoa, they claim its not possible for large company like them becuase they have to buy a massive amount of cocoa.
they are not afraid of those pressure becuase they have plenty of consumers who will buy their chocolates.July 2005, International Labor Rights Fund filed suit against Nestle in Federal District Court on behalf of a class of children who were trafficked from Mali into the Ivory Coast and forced to work twelve to fourteen hours a day with no pay, little food and sleep, and frequent beatings. What was Nestle's response to court questioning? "We are only buyers of a product."
the response from high authorities is they are no trafficking going on.
they are so reluctant to stop it because the firms they are making contract with are normally huge. it means they have a lot of stockholders they want to take care of.
Now, are you still going to bite this, to feel a few minites of happiness?
What I am persuading here is not buying or eating chocolates at all. but trying not to buy the ones from bad trade.
so I urge you to buy either fair trade chocolate or direct trade cholotae
We can simply look at where it came from befor we take a bite, and by avoding those products,
for better treatment for this farmars. the more you buy from a fair trade, the more those workers are paid in a decent and official way.
1 comment:
I appreciate this post. I personally boycott diamonds. I also avoid explaining to people why I choose not to buy or wear diamonds because I am immediately met with "Well what about coffee and oil, etc, etc.." And honestly, I think I'm just not selfless enough to be willing to give up certain commodities that come from the same suffering as diamonds. Diamonds are my own personal way to remove myself from the bloodiness of world trade. I'll definitely think about chocolate differently now!
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