Chocolate and Slavery

".....I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the state
which buys and sells men, women and children like cattle....."
Thoreau

The Problem
Forced labor is a problem affecting the entire world. Human beings are considered an expendable commodity. Children are being used and discarded. The information presented here is an attempt to bring about awareness of this problem. Based on existing surveys, documents and reports, it brings to light disturbing facts that many choose to just ignore.

The following is not about opposition to the manufacturing of chocolate, the boycott of chocolate manufacturers; or even what brand of chocolate to buy. Nor is it about instilling guilt in chocolate consumers. It is about creating awareness of our need for responsible and ethical purchasing of the chocolate we consume by providing information on which to base a decision. We are each bound by the consciousness of all and have a moral obligation to participate in the ending of such matters. Chocolate and slavery. You decide.  You act. 

The Politics
In June of 2001 the US House of Representatives voted to consider a labeling system to assure consumers that slave labor was not used in the production of their chocolate. The US chocolate industry responded with an intense lobbying effort to ward off legislation that would require “slave free” labels on their products. The Chocolate Manufacturers Association hired two former Senate majority leaders, Bob Dole and George Mitchell, to lobby lawmakers against the labeling requirement.

The US Chocolate Manufacturers Association maintained that a “slave free” label would hurt the people in West Africa by leading to a boycott of all West African cocoa, and therefore, not contribute to the abolition of slavery in that part of the world. It was said that chocolate producers could not say absolutely that none of its chocolate was produced by slave labor because beans picked by free workers were mixed in with those produced by slaves. The chocolate companies maintained that they were not responsible for the slavery in Africa because they have no control over the cocoa farms. The US chocolate industry is heavily consolidated, with two firms controlling approximately two-thirds of a multi-billion dollar chocolate market.

After media articles, and with imminent federal regulation looming, the chocolate industry finally agreed to take action in 2001. In November 2001 the US chocolate industry released a Protocol and Joint Statement outlining their plans to work toward eliminating child labor and forced labor in cocoa-producing countries, particularly West Africa.

The "Harkin-Engel" Protocol, facilitated by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), and Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI), aimed for the worst forms of child labor to be eliminated by 2005. It was signed by the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, the World Cocoa Foundation, Hershey’s, M&M Mars, Nestle, and World’s Finest Chocolate. It was also signed by Blommer's Chocolate, Guittard Chocolate, Barry Callebaut and Archer Daniels Midland. The Protocol was then endorsed by the Cote d’Ivoire government, the child labor office of the International Labor Organization, Free the Slaves, the Child Labor Coalition, the International Cocoa Organization and the National Consumer League.

The "Harkin-Engel" Protocol commits the chocolate industry to work with the non-governmental organizations to monitor and remedy abusive forms of child labor in the growing and processing of cocoa beans. It has been said that this Protocol does not force the industry to change enough and that It addresses only the symptoms of child slavery,  not the causes, which include the pricing system for cocoa. Without such a system, there is now way to ensure that abusive child labor on cocoa farms will cease permanently.

The protocol has been criticized by such groups as the International Labor Rights Fund, which has said the Protocol "is inadequate alone to address the complex problem of child labor in the cocoa sector effectively. It has resulted in a privatized mechanism without binding and enforceable rights.”  Other critics have pointed out that the Protocol does not forbid the use of slavery in general, only the enslavement of children. The industry could effectively abide by the Protocol and still use cocoa produced with slave labor.

Shortly after the protocol was signed, the Child Labor Coalition, released a statement acknowledging the industry's initiative but suggested that the industry commit to ending exploitative labor practices on cocoa farms all over the world, not just in West Africa but also in Indonesia and Brazil, where it is also reported to exist.

The U.S. government could simply enforce existing federal laws against the importation of products made with forced labor, such as Section 307 of The Tariff Act of 1930, which mandates that the U.S. Customs Service refuse entry to any product made "in whole or in part" by forced or indentured labor. Section 307 excludes from entry into the commerce of the United States any goods that it has reason to believe were mined, produced, or manufactured with forced or indentured child labor in a foreign country

Additionally, President Bill Clinton's Executive Order No. 13126 in 1999 prohibited federal agencies from buying products made by enslaved children, yet the original list did not include cocoa. If it had, the Department of Defense would be obliged to stop spending $1.6 million per year for the chocolate included in soldiers' ready-to-eat meals. The Department of Labor announced that it is "currently reviewing submissions of information received from the public on the use of forced or indentured child labor by the cocoa industry in Cote d’Ivoire," and is considering including cocoa on a future list of banned items under the Executive Order. There are international laws as well; we already have a protocol addressing child slavery. It is called the UN Convention on Children's Rights.

The Causes
According to the Cote d’Ivoire Prime Minister, multinational chocolate manufacturers have encouraged more and more developing nations to grow cocoa, forcing down the price and driving cocoa farmers to take desperate measures just to save their land. He told chocolate manufacturers that they would have to pay about 10 times as much for cocoa as they currently do if they want to end the use of forced labor in cocoa production. West Africa produces over 67% of the world’s crop of cocoa beans. The Cote d’Ivoire grows 43% of the total world cocoa crop, where there are over 600,000 cocoa farms. Two-thirds of cocoa produced worldwide is thought to be grown by small holders. The economies of the West African governments depend on cocoa. Nearly 40% of the population of the Cote d’Ivoire is involved in cocoa farming, and 40% of the total earnings exported from the Cote d’Ivoire come from cocoa.

At the time the Harkin-Engel Protocol was signed, cocoa prices were at an all-time low. The Cote d’Ivoire's government-run board had been protecting the country's farmers since 1955 by setting a minimum price at which they'd export their product, but this government regulation was privatized in 1999. The resulting fall of cocoa prices in 1999 and 2000 greatly increased rural poverty and led to the cutting of salaries, a reduction in government spending for healthcare, and, according to a report by the International Labor Rights Fund, to "the widespread use of cheap child labor."

Farmers with no concept of world market prices, free trade or commodities brokers were left to fend for themselves. Working mostly in isolation on their small family farms spread throughout the country, the farmers did not, and still do not, have the means to communicate among themselves about the prices they're getting for their cocoa. They operate at the mercy of buyers, who pay cash and haul away their cocoa beans; the farmers being unable to afford trucks themselves

One half of the world’s 52 Highly Indebted Poor Countries have a high incidence of workers laboring under slave conditions. Debt repayments are taking money away from basic services such as health care and education. The US State Department and the International Labor Organization reported child slavery on Cote d’Ivoire cocoa farms. Research by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture indicated that though child slavery is limited, other abusive forms of child labor are unfortunately widespread. Hundreds of thousands of children work in dangerous tasks on cocoa farms. At least 12,000 child cocoa workers have come to their present situation through trafficking. The same investigation identified poverty as the cause.

Producer income remains low because there have been no steps taken to ensure stable and sufficient prices for cocoa producers. World cocoa prices fluctuate substantially and have been well below production costs in the last decade. Though cocoa prices have shown moderate increases in the past few years, cocoa producers remain mired in debt accumulated when prices were below production costs. Typically, producers also get only half the world price, as they must use the exploitative middlemen to sell their crop. Low payments made to the plantation owners contribute to the slave conditions.

Though poverty still remains the cause, civil war in Cote d’Ivoire has further served to disrupted the project to eradicate slave labor as well as reduce the supply and force up the world price of cocoa. But farmers have not benefited from the higher prices, as many are not able to get their product to port. Groups like Global Exchange, Save the Children and the International Labor Rights Fund insist that without minimum pricing to ensure a steady income, farmers are not likely to make major changes in pay and labor practices on their farms.

So in the end poor countries are crippled by debt and their people denied the basic necessities of life and are forced to suffer. We in the rest of the world enjoy the fruits (literally) of their labor. Consumers and companies look for bargains and don’t stop to ask why they are so cheap. By always looking for the best deal, we may be choosing slave-made products without knowing it.

It is said that poverty is the source of slavery.  The source of course is other human beings but poverty is certainly a contributing factor in the justification of slavery mind set.  Slavery itself is the source of poverty.  Those who exist in a world without the opportunity for education, health care, physical and social development and a sense of hope or of future will indeed become the next generation to fulfill the unrelenting human tradition and ritual of slavery.  And so it perpetuates.

Alternatives
Outside the Cote d’Ivoire, there are some farmers who are guaranteed a minimum price for their cocoa. They belong to Fair Trade Certified producer groups. These are collectives made up of democratically managed farms. There are 20 collectives in nine countries: Ghana, Cameroon, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Belize and Peru, representing thousands of farmers.

Chocolate manufacturers and importers who buy Fair Trade cocoa sign a contract with the Fairtrade Labeling Organizations International committing to pay the co-op farmers the Fair Trade price, the world market price plus a premium, that guarantees a living wage and extra money to go back into the co-op community. The process is designed to be transparent, and the right is reserved to inspect tracking and product documentation. Farms are inspected once each year and abusive labor practices are not tolerated.

Fair Trade Certified licensees produce only a small amount of the chocolate compared to that produced by major manufacturers. Some companies choose not to buy from West Africa at all, believing that any cocoa from that part of the world may involve forced labor. Because organic farms are subject to an independent monitoring system that checks labor practices, organic chocolate is also considered slave free.

The amount of cocoa purchased by these companies is too small to take the place of the total amount of cocoa produced worldwide. Only a small percentage of cocoa farmed by Fair Trade Certified collectives is sold at the Fair Trade price.
 
Observations
The following data is presented to illustrate the extent and degree to which this problem has been documented and is accepted as standard business practice. And not, as in the minds of some, a problem that does not exist. As human nature serves to confirm; the farmers themselves may not even be aware that they are supporting slavery; with the earnings of a small cocoa farm far less than the wages owed the workers. Forced or indentured labor is slavery. We fought a war over this. Remember?

There are over 27 million slaves in the world today.  Of them over 9 million are children.  At least 179 million children are exploited by hazardous work; 246 million children aged 5-17 are child laborers.  Between 2000 and 2004 the number of slaves worldwide decreased worldwide by 11% while during the same period the number of people used as slaves in Africa increased by 49%.

Mali
* Thousands of Malian children were trafficked and sold into indentured servitude on Cote d’Ivoire plantations. In September 1998, a private Abidjan daily newspaper exposed the widespread practice of importing and indenturing Malian boys for field work on Ivorian plantations under abusive conditions. Mali was not the only source of forced child labor used in the country. (US Dept of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 1999, 25 February 2000)

Benin
* Children from Benin have been taken to Nigeria, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, and Gabon. There they are sold into servitude in agriculture, as domestics, or as prostitutes. (US Dept of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 1999, 25 February 2000)


reliefweb map

Cameroon
* Children are trafficked from and through Cameroon to other West African countries for indentured or domestic servitude, farm labor, and sexual exploitation. (US Dept. of State, Trafficking in Persons Report, July 12, 2001)

Togo
* Togolese citizens are trafficked to Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Nigeria, the Middle East (specifically Saudi Arabia and Kuwait), and Europe (primarily France and Germany) for indentured or domestic servitude, farm labor, and sexual exploitation. (US Dept. of State, Trafficking in Persons Report, July 12, 2001.)


The Profession
The chocolate manufacturers claim that they were not aware of the human issues of cocoa production until the late 1990’s. Yet in 1994 I personally was informed by the representative of a premium Swiss chocolate manufacturer that, they, being aware of abusive labor practices for some time and sensing a moral burden, had made the ethical decision to use only free market cocoa in their chocolate production.

As poverty has been found to be the major underlying contributor to slavery, the present conditions serve to further aggravate the situation. Poverty is not just a conceptualized figure cowering under the cloak of an admonishing literary holiday specter, it is a very real problem affecting the daily survival of people all over a world where despair and desperation dictate the circumstances. In the instance of chocolate the solutions seem eminently achievable. However, as is often the case, the truth is easy to see, living it, altogether different.

Activist organizations have trumpeted the cause against slavery in cocoa production for many years; and still it continues. Representatives from major chocolate companies have personally told me that the problem does not exist. Others acknowledge that it does exist, but that it is not their problem and respond in irritated disgust that the issue just intrudes into their business. How unfair.

Similar responses have come from professional chefs and pastry chefs. Sometimes derived out of a conflicted deference to a favored purveyor relationship, often because of the price that they are willing to pay and sadly on occasion, because they simply don’t care. Or upon the sobering realization that they are in fact using slave grown cocoa and have absolutely no intention of making a commitment to the contrary; they then become defensive or revert to deluded denial. It seems we are often willing to go to far greater lengths to avoid what makes us uncomfortable than to do what is responsible. The putting aside of superficial self-interest is implicit in any decision for the benefit of others.

Ironically, it is professional chefs who perhaps have the greatest opportunity to affect change. Particularly the pastry chefs among them, who have the greatest vested interest in the use of chocolate, and now incidentally, enjoy great celebrity from the use of chocolate. In that celebrity lays a conflict. The conflict arising out of the sponsorship provided by the chocolate manufacturers and distributors of the activities and towering arcane displays for fellow chefs and admirers that gained them their newfound celebrity. How does one navigate the fine line between survival in that world and moral obligation? There is a name for that. It is called personal conviction.

If chefs can summon the fortitude to sign declarations of their convictions and parade them down the thoroughfare and in the press, proclaiming their commitment for or against: preferred vendor relationships, organic produce, dolphin free tuna, beer fed hand massaged cattle, 99% cocoa mass chocolate, genetically engineered salmon, and the artificially enlarged livers of geese and ducks; it stands to reason that they are capable of showing the same commitment and passion for other human beings.

When professional chefs decide that it is important enough to them, whether due to their personal value set or because it eventually becomes politically desirable; that is when change for the greater good will be effected in the food service industry.

Things You Can Do
Learn more. Educate yourself regarding this issue.

Write a letter to the chocolate companies; to the company that you buy from, and ask them what they have done to ensure that proper ethical practices are in place in their companies. This includes ensuring that farmers in poor countries get a fair price for their cocoa beans. If in the profession, let your vendor know of your intention to use only chocolate derived from free market cocoa. Chefs are known for their affinity for proclaiming their amount of time spent, and the pleasure they derive from sourcing food. Spend the time to source free market chocolate and let your peers know of your efforts. Then, espouse your convictions to the press that you so longingly seek. If you are a chocolate aficionado, you will find links on this site to organizations that refer you to companies that offer retail size portions of chocolate. Professional chefs and vendors will find links to bulk suppliers.

Make other people aware of this situation.

As a consumer of chocolate, and knowing these facts about chocolate, slavery and debt, I am personally challenged to question the use of chocolate which may be contributing to the enslavement and abuse of other human beings. I am therefore compelled to communicate with chocolate companies to inform them of my concerns and to request their action for the ethical and responsible production of chocolate derived from fair market cocoa. Ultimately this is achieved in the open market through what brand of chocolate I choose to purchase. I invite you to do the same.

In Conclusion
Circumspectus Orbit. Look around you. If you accept that which you are aware is intrinsically wrong and have influence over, have you not contributed to its existence? You are what you do. You do what you know. Your heart is in your mind. Willful blindness will not buy divine absolution. That which is ignored will not cease to exist.  Closing ones eyes serves only to feed the rabid, gaping maw of indifferent, self-serving greed, the continued existence of harsh injustice and the exponential growth of dehumanizing inequality; and in the process, …..makes us, responsible accomplices.