Project- Chocolate

In the spring, a few of us were introduced to the following film trailer:



This sparked a lot of interest in researching more about the chocolate industry, and the slavery that it perpetuates throughout the world. What we found was truly shocking to us:

"Today about 70% of the world's chocolate comes from West Africa, while the remaining bit is harvested in Central/South America and Asia. About 40% of the world's cocoa comes from the small West African country Ivory Coast where in 2002 it was discovered that 284,000 children were trapped in bonded labor on cocoa farms. 15,000 of those children have been trafficked from surrounding countries, the majority of which are Mali, Benin, Togo and Burkina Faso. Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon, West Africa's other cocoa producers are also known to receive and provide trafficked children. In 2001 a senator from Iowa, Tom Harkins and a House Representative from New York, Eliot Engel attempted to create a bill requiring chocolate manufacturers to put a label on their products showing the chocolate products that were not made by slaves. The chocolate industry protested this act saying that it would cause consumers to boycott, hurting the cocoa farmers even more by bringing in less money, and causing them to use more slaves. The chocolate industry began publicizing action they would take to eliminate child slavery in order to stop the government from taking action. The Chocolate Manufacturers Association adopted the Harkins-Engel Protocol aimed at establishing mechanisms to end “the worst forms of child labor.” Harkins and Engel set a 2005 deadline for the chocolate companies to eliminate child slavery, however it was extended to 2008 when it was not reached. The 2008 deadline has passed with little change made.

According to the World Cocoa Foundation 50 million people worldwide depend on cocoa as a source of livelihood. It is a 13 billion dollar per year industry in the United States bringing in over 400 thousand tons of cocoa beans. By the time these cocoa beans reach the big chocolate manufacturers it is impossible to know which beans were harvested by slaves, and which were not."

It's a little overwhelming to think about that much money and that many slaves, and maybe hard to understand how we can even make an impact. But the key to starting to make changes is sometimes simply to start. We've challenged ourselves to be conscious of the chocolate we buy, and taking a few seconds to check whether or not it's fair trade- fair trade brands will state this on the label. And for many of us, this has extended into the other things we buy as well, like clothing and food. Again, it's a bit overwhelming to know where to start, but we're working on a few projects to start spreading the word and changing the way we buy.

If you'd like to print materials to share this information with friends and family, click here.

If you'd like to find out where to buy fair trade chocolate and other fair trade goods, click here.

If you'd like to read more updates about this project, click here.