I know, the last thing you want is someone telling you that one of the few joys left without guilt is really guilt laden, but this time you can enjoy a small transgression and feel good about it. The good news is you can now buy delicious chocolate and know that the farmer who produced the cocoa beans received a fair price for his product and it was produced without illegal child labour and without child slaves. The bad news is that some 80% of the cocoa beans are produced using child labourers and slaves. So the trick is to enjoy the fair trade product and, if you are the advocating type, actively encourage the child-exploiting producers to change their ways.
You probably recall that in 2001 the big chocolate manufacturers agreed to take steps to eliminate illegal child labour, provide schools and decent living conditions for cocoa labourers, and develop a certification process to assure these standards were met. The protocol called for this all to be in place within five years. The industry established the World Cocoa Foundation to implement the protocol. According to a recent, in-depth investigation by the BBC, almost nothing has been accomplished since the protocol was signed, and certainly the five year goal has not been achieved. For example, only 6 of the planned 40 schools have been built. One major producing prefecture in the Ivory Coast has seen no funding from the protocol. You can read and listen to the BBC report at http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/assignment.shtml and go to Chocolate’s Child Labourers. There is also a summary of the programme at http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2401700.ece
What this means is that your Kit Kat or Hershey with Almonds or your Haagen Dazs chocolate ice cream almost certainly contains the product of child exploitation. Of course, the choice is yours, but I personally prefer not to participate in that.
The child workers, some as young as 10, work 12 hours per day, do not go to school, are locked in their rooms at night, and if they try to escape they are physically maimed. Their work is difficult and dangerous, carrying heavy bags of cocoa beans along rocky trails or chopping with large machetes. When they reach adulthood they are abandoned to a life of living on the streets.
International organisations such as Amnesty International and the Canadian Red Cross and the International Labour Organisation estimate there are some 240.000 child labours involved in cocoa production in the Ivory Coast which produces some 40% of the world cocoa. Of these, it is estimated that between 5.000 and 15.000 are child slaves. According to the BBC, the Ivorian government is complicit in this terrible child exploitation.
Since the signing of the protocol in 2001 the price of cocoa has risen by over 50% (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development). According to anecdotal information from the BBC, many farmers have received no price increase for their beans during that period. Faced with increasing prices of pesticides and fuel, many farmers are very near financial disaster.
But don’t despair! You can now buy Fairtrade chocolate at your local market; in the US, for example, at Safeway and Whole Foods; in the UK at Sainsbury’s. Make sure you get the package with the fair trade certificate on it. There are also several companies selling fair trade chocolate on the Web, including Equal Exchange (www.equalexchange.com) and Devine Chocolate (http://www.divinechocolateusa.com or http://www.divinechocolate.com in the UK).
Avoid products by the big guys including M&M/Mars, Nestle (including Haagen Dazs), Godiva, Ghiradelli, Lindt, and Hershey. These are not the only perpetrators in this sordid story; others include ADM, Cargill and many middlemen, but they are not as easily accessible by consumers.
If you want to be more proactive, write to the World Cocoa Foundation and its members and tell them you are fed up with their delays and will boycott the products of its members until they comply fully with the 2001 protocol. And then make sure you boycott the products. But that’s not the end of it. Whenever you buy some Fairtrade chocolate, send an amount equal to the purchase price or more if you can, to Oxfam to enable them to get more cocoa farmers into the Fairtrade scheme. Send an email if you want an address or web site for this.
Politically, the US protocol was generated by New York Congressman Eliot Engel and Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. Write to them and your Congressman and Senators and tell them you want the protocol enforced when it comes up for review next year. In Europe, write to your MEP and your minister of foreign Affairs and tell them the same thing. If you want sample letters and addresses, email me.
In the meantime, if you want to read a nice article on chocolate, go to http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/products/specialty/choc_guide.html.
Grambois France July 2007
Email glensviewpoint@btinternet.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)