Chocolate Industry
Chocolate. It seems as if the worlds revolves around chocolate. I can guarantee that out of 100 people at least 95 have ate chocolate before. Not because it’s obviously tasty, because it can be found almost everywhere. If you go to a local Macys, a clothing store, you can find chocolate for sale next to the registers. So how did chocolate become so abundant around the world? Not only is chocolate an abundant supply but is also really cheap. So how does one create a copious amount of something and sell it for cheap?
Cocoa bean grows primarily in Western Africa, Asia, and Latin America because of their tropical climates. The cocoa beans are what makes chocolate in general. 70% of the world’s cocoa is supplied by Western Africa countries such as Ghana and in the Ivory Coast. “The cocoa they grow and harvest is sold to a majority of chocolate companies, including the largest in the world.” However, as the years have gone by, news about child labor happening in this industry has hit the media multiple times. Journalists and organization try spreading the word on what’s happening with all the child labor in this industry, but it doesn’t always get the attention it should receive. This can be because of no one really wants to know where all the good stuff is coming from. Another reason, why we do not know more about this child labor news in the industry is because the industry has become really secretive and thus creating journalist to have a hard time to get the real news on what’s happening. One interesting aspect of this news is that, “the farms of Western Africa supply cocoa to international giants such as Hershey’s, Mars and Nestle- revealing the industry’s direct connection to the worst forms of child labor, human trafficking, and slavery.” The Ivory Coast runs on the revenue received on the exports of cocoa. Due to the chocolate industry growing, cheap cocoa started to have demand. “On average, cocoa farmers earn less than $2 per day. As a result, they often resort to the use of child labor to keep their prices competitive.” Africa has multiple countries with intense poverty. This allows children to grow up fast and start providing for their family earlier than the norm here in America. In America, teens start working around the ages of 16 or 17, while in African countries you see children start working around even earlier than that. “Some children end up on the cocoa farms because they need work and traffickers tell them that job pays well.” It’s sad to realize that their are children who are being sold by their own family to help their families. Being sold and bought isn’t doing anyone good, and it’s sad to hear that it happens in the world around us, but we don’t do anything about due to not being able to have it in the news more often. These farms are dangerous due to having a poor work environment. Also these children who are being forced to work, are missing out in school. The children who do not attend school are violating the International Labor Organization’s Child Labor Standards. Not attending school gives little hope for the children to ever escape the poverty they live in. It makes me wonder how these children probably hope for a better life, but they can’t get the same privileges we as Americans do. These children who are being forced to work, also don’t get the benefit of ever seeing their families again. “Most of the children laboring on the cocoa farms are between the ages of 12 and 16, but reporters have found children as young as 5.” Their life basically consists of making other people happy, while they continue to suffer without having anyone notice them at all. Females who are at farms work their whole adulthood there. A regular day for one of these children in the farm is to wake up in the morning at 6, and work to the evening. Children early are on are experiencing violent weapons such as knives to cut. There are international labor laws that are violated because no child should be experiencing these violent acts at such a young age. Children were also beaten daily if they made mistakes. They would have scars, bruises, and fresh cuts all over their body. Most of these scars came from machetes. “In addition to the hazards of using machetes, children are also exposed to agricultural chemicals on cocoa farms in Western Africa.” Also these children are not being fed properly. They work constantly, but are getting minimum amount of food. They sleep on wooden planks without having access to clean bathrooms and water. “Approximately 1.8 million children in the Ivory Coast and Ghana may be exposed to the worst forms of child labor on cocoa farms.”
Slavery is very common in the cocoa farms meaning that the children work constantly, but do not get paid. This makes me wonder if these children’s objective in the first place was to give back to their families, how are they ever supposed to because first of all they don’t get paid and second they may never see their families ever again. All this leads to these children to be considered slaves. “Cases often involve acts of physical violence, such as being whipped for working slowly or trying to escape.” If one ever decided to escape they would usually get beaten and severely hurt. There was this one child who escaped and he said all these people who are eating chocolate are eating my flesh. I guess the meaning of putting all my blood and sweat was taken in the literal text here, but then again this is the truth. There are children out there in the world who believe they have no hope because they live in a hard life, and then they don’t have many advocates protecting them from these struggles.
The question now is slave-free chocolate possible? “Despite their role in contributing to child labor, slavery, and human trafficking, the chocolate industry has not taken significant steps to remedy the problem.” The chocolate companies have the power to end all this child labor because they already have a $60 billion industry. However, they still have not done much to solve the child labor problems in West Africa. This makes me wonder if they even feel like fixing the problem? Their main focus is on money, and they probably don’t care much of how everything was produced because they know they will get the profit in the end.
The chocolate industry may at first seem all good and sweet, but it’s actually the opposite of that. Not many of us know the true meaning of where chocolate comes from, because we usually just focus on the good food rather than the actual origin of the product.