Chocolate, Teddy Bears, and… Machetes?

The next time you savor that piece of chocolate, think about where the chocolate came from and how it was produced. Better yet, buy Fair Trade-certified chocolate. Fair Trade is a social movement to alleviate global poverty and promote sustainability.
“Forty percent of the World’s cocoa is produced in the Cote d’Ivoire, West Africa,” according to a recent International Labor Rights Forum press release, via CSRwire. “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.”
These children, aged 9 to 16 years, work 12 to 14 hours a day, scattering pesticides, chopping cocoa trees with sharp machetes, and hauling heavy bags of beans. They receive little food and shelter and are beaten if they drop bags or try to escape.
Providing a fairer price gives a break to cocoa farmers and their families which, in turn, helps to mitigate child labor in the industry.

• Read ILRF’s press release, ‘Cocoa Companies Fail to Let Consumers Know Which Chocolate is Produced Without Child Labor’, by Brian Campbell at: http://vcr.csrwire.com/node/9772

Believe or not, slave labor in the cocoa industry dates as far back as the early 1500s where the Spanish conquistadors dominated the Aztecs. As the slaves of the New World died off in the mid-1500s, African slaves were brought in to meet the labour shortages in Central America and Mexico. “By the mid-1800s, the cocoa trees of the Caribbean and the Spanish Americas were depleted and disease ridden: colonists had destroyed the Theobroma stock through over-production and poor management,” as per Carol Off’s book, ‘Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the World’s Most Seductive Sweet’. Theobroma is the scientific name for the trees, native to the Central and South American tropical forests, which bear cocoa pods.
The African islands of São Tomé and Princípe, colonized by the Portuguese, replaced Central and South American as key sources of cocoa by the mid-1800s. The Gold Coast, a British colony, became the center of cocoa when the slave trade of São Tomé came under intense scrutiny by anti-slave lobbyists with a threatened boycott in 1909. By the time fires had devastated the farms of Ghana in the 1980s, Cǒte d’Ivoire became the world’s leading cocoa producer.
How did children become enslaved in Cǒte d’Ivoire’s cocoa industry? Several culprits: A combination of Reaganomics, plummeting cocoa stock prices, and the implosion of Cǒte d’Ivoire’s economy, mismanaged by a corrupt government. Children, mainly from Mali, became a cheap labour source as cocoa farmers fell deeper into poverty. That was in the 1990s.
It’s still happening today.
‘Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the World’s Most Seductive Sweet‘ (2007), by Carol Off, is a well-researched historic, engaging narrative of the economic and political development – plus the social and environmental injustices — of the cocoa/chocolate industry. It involved not only the European aristocracy and colonialists, but also the big chocolate companies with whom we’re familiar.

• Buy and read the book, ‘Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the World’s Most Seductive Sweet‘ (2007), via Chapters at: http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Bitter-Chocolate-Investigating-Dark-Side-Carol-Off/9780679313205-item.html?ref=Search+Books%3a+%2527Bitter+Chocolate%2527

Info on the ‘Fair Trade Certified’ logo in Canada can be found here: http://transfair.ca/
Fair Trade chocolates are available in Metro Vancouver from the makers of:

• Cocoa Camino, by Ottawa-based co-operative, La Siemba – http://www.cocoacamino.com/

• Dagoba Organic Chocolate, based in Ashland, OR – http://www.dagobachocolate.com/

• Endangered Species Chocolate, who donates 10% of net profits to help support species, habitat, and humanity – http://www.chocolatebar.com/

• Green and Black’s, originating from the UK – http://www.greenandblacks.com/

• Organic Fair, a Cobble Hill, BC artisan and farm – http://www.organicfair.com/

• Terra Nostra Organic Chocolate, an organic and fair trade shop in Vancouver – http://www.terranostrachocolate.com/

Any other suggestions? Please comment.

• Watch a YouTube video, ‘Chocolate and Child Labor’, by the International Labor Rights Forum at:

• Another YouTube video, ‘Fair Trade Chocolate’, shows what’s really involved in mass market chocolate making:

• For an update (early 2008) on child slavery in the cocoa/chocolate industry, watch the YouTube video, ‘Chocolate, Coco, Greed, and the Ivory Coast – part 1’, by Democracynow.com at:

• The YouTube video, ‘Chocolate, Coco, Greed, and the Ivory Coast – part 2’, by Democracynow.com is at:

• For info on Fair Trade chocolate, watch the YouTube video, ‘Fair Trade Coco’, at:

• For info on the Fair Trade market and movement, watch the YouTube video of LinkTV.org interviewing the President of FairTradeCertified.org on, ‘Fair Trade Awareness’, at: