Connections

Many people know that some coffees carry a fair-trade label to indicate that the beans come from places where workers are well treated. It is not as well known that some of the largest chocolate suppliers in the world are suspected of dealing with cocoa farms that have abusive child-labor practices.

I can't remember why I found myself reading about cocoa farms recently on the Web, but, as with eating chocolate, it was hard to stop after one bite. An industry group has been working with communities in West Africa to eliminate forced child labor and unsafe practices. But advocates for fair trade insist the major suppliers aren't doing enough quickly enough. They argue that in the interest of corporate profits the price of cocoa beans is set too low to allow farmers to upgrade their farms and have decent lives.

Ivory Coast is the largest producer of cocoa beans in the world. According to one account, the industry has "said it will have a monitoring system in place to cover at least 50 percent of the [600,000] cocoa farms in Ivory Coast and Ghana by the middle of 2008." Does that sound good enough to you, especially when the accusations about child labor include not only making them carry heavy loads, use machetes, and apply chemicals, but slavery?

The most egregious accusations come from Global Exchange, a human rights organization that focuses on the global economy and fair trade. It claims that "approximately 286,000 children between the ages of 9 and 12 have been reported on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast alone with as many as 12,000 likely to have arrived in their situation as the result of child trafficking. . . .West African parents living in poverty often sell their kids to cocoa farmers for $50 to $100 in hopes that the children will make some money on their own."

The article goes on to allege that "these children work 80 to 100 hours per week . . . frequently make little or no money, and are regularly beaten, starved, and exhausted. Most of these children will never even taste the final product that results from their suffering."

I sincerely hope that these claims are exaggerated, but who am I to judge the agency's researchers?

In July 2005, Nestle, Archer Daniels Midland, and Cargill were sued on behalf of a number of young men from Mali, who say they were held as slave laborers on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast in the 1990s, when they were teenagers. As far as I can tell the suit is pending in federal court in California. A.D.M. and Cargill have built positive reputations as PBS sponsors.

These corporations say they are committed to eliminating abusive labor practices and that they cut off farms that practice them.

Global Exchange supports standards that can be certified and wants consumers to buy chocolate, like coffee, that has a fair-trade label. It believes that farmers deserve higher incomes so they can better provide for the health of their families and the education of their children. Hershey's, which apparently buys cocoa from the major suppliers, says it is already providing families with money to educate their children and playing a leadership role in West Africa by helping farmers grow cocoa sustainably.

But Global Exchange claims that Hershey's and M&M/Mars are "almost certainly" using chocolate "produced partly by slaves." I suppose they can both be telling the truth, which, I am sorry to admit, leaves the consumer, you and me, with an opportunity to continue taking the easy way out.