Chocolate and child labor

February 13, 2003 9:30 PM

Bittersweet chocolate. "Of the $1.1 billion in boxed chocolates that Americans are expected to buy on Valentine's Day, very little will be untainted by the scourge of child labor. Although some who buy those bonbons will do so without knowing the sinister history of their purchases, others, like the chocolate makers, will have known for at least two years, if not longer, that cocoa beans imported from the Ivory Coast -- used to make nearly half the chocolate consumed in this country -- are harvested in large part by children, some as young as 9, and many of whom are considered slaves, trafficked from desperately poor countries like Mali and Burkina Faso."
posted by homunculus (36 comments total)

Here are more articles on the new face of slavery.
posted by homunculus at 9:41 PM on February 13, 2003

I mostly cut my chocolate consumption after I learned about this. Here's a whole issue on the issue.
posted by gramcracker at 9:45 PM on February 13, 2003

Alright, I can live without diamonds. I've even been consciously aware when purchasing athletic shoes. But goddamnit, I'm drawing the line at the threat to my addiction to chocolate. It just ain't gonna happen.
posted by Stan Chin at 9:48 PM on February 13, 2003

Won't *somebody* think of The Children?

Oh, homunculus is working this issue? Allrighty, then.
posted by davidmsc at 9:51 PM on February 13, 2003

I don't know, Stan. For me, the reminder that I'm eating something that's been produced in part by 8 year old slave children makes it seem a little less tasty.
posted by gramcracker at 9:52 PM on February 13, 2003

Of course a globalized capitalized world is going to be full of slaves. What are the billions of uneducated and hopeless people from the third world good for elsewise? They might as well kill themselves if they don't do our slave work, because there sure as hell ain't no world-wellfare. At least not from my tax €s.

PS: Any chance of the Euro-sign being able to show in the future of MeFi?
posted by zerofoks at 10:03 PM on February 13, 2003

One boy named Vincent said he had witnessed coworkers beaten nearly to death when they tried to escape (see photo), so running away wasn’t much of an option—plus, he had no idea which way “home” was. Like hundreds of young men, Vincent came to the Ivory Coast from Mali hoping to find paid work. He was tricked as many are: promised a job, carted into the countryside, forced to work without pay. To magnify the horrific injustice, Vincent had never even tasted chocolate—a luxury.

When asked what he’d like to say to people who eat chocolate, Vincent said: “They enjoy something I suffered to make.” Tell them, he said, when they eat chocolate, they are “eating my flesh.”

posted by homunculus at 10:04 PM on February 13, 2003

So, is there anything left in the world safe to eat/purchase/consume anymore?
posted by ducktape at 10:16 PM on February 13, 2003

[homer] Mmmm... creamy, milk chocolate Vincent flesh. [/homer]
posted by willnot at 10:33 PM on February 13, 2003

Oxygen is created by a sinister fractional distillation slave trade market. Please, before you take your next breath, think of poor little Xenon.
posted by Pancake Overlord at 10:50 PM on February 13, 2003

Oxygen is created by a sinister fractional distillation slave trade market. Please, before you take your next breath, think of poor little Xenon.

great analogy, dude. chocolate totally rocks.
posted by mcsweetie at 11:19 PM on February 13, 2003

Chocolate isn't all bad though - there's fair trade chocolate.
posted by plep at 11:44 PM on February 13, 2003

As someone who ate probably a third of a box of Whitman's today I feel like a dirtbag now, thanks, MeFi! Speaking of chocolate, anyone out there remember Choco-lite bars? If there was any way they'd bring those back I think I could learn to live with the slave labor thing. Seriously, though this sucks, like ducktape, is there anything you can eat and feel good about these days?
posted by Jimmy Olsen at 1:19 AM on February 14, 2003

Luckily if you live in the UK you can buy Green and Blacks organic chocolate in most supermarkets now. It's fair trade and tastes pretty good as well.
posted by Summer at 2:03 AM on February 14, 2003

Jimmy Olsen, go to canada and buy an Aero bar. Same thing as a Choco-lite, if I remember correctly.

It's the tears of the children that makes chocolate taste so damn good.
posted by bondcliff at 6:51 AM on February 14, 2003

What can we do to help stop this? I need a call to action.

Because I don't like that my chocolate is produced this way, but many people "NEED" chocolate. It DOES produce feelings of love, after all.
posted by agregoli at 7:24 AM on February 14, 2003

Please remember, roses are out, too.

I'm with ducktape--is there anything that I can purchase with a clear conscience anymore?
posted by gramcracker at 7:28 AM on February 14, 2003

Chocolove rules. Not sure if they qualify as Fair Trade, haven't researched it enough:
SINGLE ORIGIN BEANS - CARIBBEAN
In addition to being organic and Belgian-made, these chocolates are single origin, from an island in the Caribbean. I’d like to tell you the exact origin but I am sworn to secrecy. Given that these are single origin chocolates, all the flavors in the bean show up in the chocolate. To make a single origin chocolate taste this good, the beans must be excellent. The varietal of the bean is a cross between a criollo and a trinitaro. This bean produces high, fruity flavor notes and yet still has full-bodied cocoa flavor.

Apropos of Valentine's Day, Chocolove prints a love poem on the inside of each wrapper, EG:

from A Lecture upon the Shadow
by John Donne

Stand still, and I will read to thee
A lecture, Love, in love's philosophy.
These three hours that we have spent
Walking here, two shadows went
Along with us, which we ourselves produced;
But, now the sun is just above our head,
We do those shadows tread
And to brave clearness all things are reduced.

So, whilst our infant loves did grow,
Disguises did and shadows flow
From us and our care; but now, 'tis not so.

That love hath not attained the high'st degree
Which is still diligent lest others see.

(Sorry, this isn't Viral Marketing. I got turned on to Chocolove because they don't use refined sugar. Good for vegans too! And the content of real cocoa is high, which tastes great.)
posted by Shane at 7:36 AM on February 14, 2003

Oxygen is created by a sinister fractional distillation slave trade market. Please, before you take your next breath, think of poor little Xenon.

great analogy, dude. chocolate totally rocks.

it's a pathetic analogy. it amazes me that anyone can actually vocalize support of child slavery.
posted by batboy at 7:40 AM on February 14, 2003

Call me a bleeding-heart liberal, but I believe that one should do whatever is in their power to decrease the suffering in the world. I've been wanting to try some of the more exotic chocolates anyway, so buying the certified free trade stuff is just fine and dandy with me. Thanks for the heads-up, homunculus.

*realizes she should never shop for chocolate online while she's hungry, but what the hey... it's Valentine's Day, and no one's buying it for me!*
posted by Soliloquy at 8:08 AM on February 14, 2003

Of course it's not exactly easy for chocolate makers, who simply purchase cocoa beans in bulk, to determine which beans were produced by child labor. But the chocolate industry has committed to work with the Child Labor Coalition to find a way to end abusive cocoa production. See the industry's protocol (pdf) for more information.
posted by pardonyou? at 8:14 AM on February 14, 2003

Does anyone know if Scharffen Berger uses Fair Trade Cocoa?
posted by sierray at 8:18 AM on February 14, 2003

Of course a globalized capitalized world is going to be full of slaves. What are the billions of uneducated and hopeless people from the third world good for elsewise? They might as well kill themselves if they don't do our slave work, because there sure as hell ain't no world-wellfare. At least not from my tax €s.
posted by zerofoks at 10:03 PM PST on February 13

zerofolks, that's a truly depressing (and wrong) view of the world. Let me tell you what the USA/EU and also Japan must do to rid the world of slave labor and assorted horrors:

-stop the subsidies to american and european farmers and/or noncompetitive industries;
-cease using shameful trade barriers to the exports of the Third World, thereby allowing commodities to be sold at a reasonable price with full access to the rich countries' markets;
-learn about the reality of the luxury items industry and, as a consumer, urge them to treat all their suppliers as you'd have them treat you and your loved ones.
posted by 111 at 8:35 AM on February 14, 2003

I read Naomi Klein's No Logo, a book about the effects of globalization, and concluded that, no, there aren't any ethical choices when it comes to shopping in North America - Klein doesn't even have any suggestions to make. Practically everything we buy was made under substandard labour conditions somewhere.

So.. the only thing I felt I could do was live as simply as possible, buy things secondhand at Goodwill and such places or make them myself, and start supporting a child through Foster Parents Plan. It may not be much, but I hope to at least limit my part in a system that exploits others, and to help at least one other person in a significant way.
posted by orange swan at 8:49 AM on February 14, 2003

I cannot wait until the day it is discovered computers are built by child slaves so the "bleeding-heart liberals" will stop using them and I will no longer have to come online and hear about how my shoes, clothes and food are produced by exploted children.

Nikes are comfy, chocolate is yummy, and the world is a very unfair place. Pass the Hersey's Kisses.
posted by bondcliff at 8:52 AM on February 14, 2003

Nikes are comfy, chocolate is yummy, and the world is a very unfair place. Pass the Hersey's Kisses.

Yeah, um, and Starbucks has great coffee !!!

*siiigh* Here we go with the outdated cliche "bleeding heart" shite again. Politics masks the real nature of the question, which is simple ethics. Heart or Lack of One. Sad, really.
posted by Shane at 9:01 AM on February 14, 2003

I cannot wait until the day... I will no longer have to come online and hear about how my shoes, clothes and food are produced by exploited children.

Well, as you say, bondcliff, the world is a very unfair place. Your share of the unfairness seems to entail knowing that lifestyle you have is possible because of the misery of others. It seems to me you can suck that up along with your Hershey's Kisses.
posted by orange swan at 9:03 AM on February 14, 2003

"zerofolks, "

that's not how my name is spelled, 222!

Your various suggestions on what the world has to do to combat poverty sound more socialist than realistic.
posted by zerofoks at 9:09 AM on February 14, 2003

Nikes are comfy, chocolate is yummy, and the world is a very unfair place. Pass the Hersey's Kisses.

Just don't forget that things change, and you can all of a sudden end up being a victim of unfairness.
Perhaps it would be better if you used John Rawls' "veil of ignorance", which goes more or less like this: first try to forget whether you're rich/poor male/female white/not white young/old etc etc. Then consider the following question: if I had no knowledge whatsoever of my present standing on society, what kind of society would I like to share with other people?
It could be a bit like one of those Twilight Zone episodes where someone falls prey of his own prejudices and belief systems.
Finally, don't forget that slaveowners, robber barons and Victorian exploiters of the poor had views similar to yours, and history proved them wrong in the sense that, no, squalor and slavery are not unavoidable at all.
posted by 111 at 9:12 AM on February 14, 2003

Your various suggestions on what the world has to do to combat poverty sound more socialist than realistic.


Sorry zerofoks. Actually, my suggestions are Adam Smith, free market, run-of-the-mill conclusions favored by organizations such as WTO and endorsed at the Davos Forum. It's precisely the kind of economic policy (free competition, no state sponsorship for noncompetitive industries, empowerment of the consumer etc etc) the USA preaches but, alas, has not yet begun to fully implement.
posted by 111 at 9:21 AM on February 14, 2003

Here's some cocoa facts.

Now you know.
posted by Pollomacho at 9:23 AM on February 14, 2003

Does anyone know if Scharffen Berger uses Fair Trade Cocoa?

I was wondering the same thing, sierray.
posted by DakotaPaul at 11:00 AM on February 14, 2003

Of course it's not exactly easy for chocolate makers, who simply purchase cocoa beans in bulk, to determine which beans were produced by child labor.

Since when do buyers not have any control over where they buy their products? The links sound slightly promising, pardonyou, but I'm skeptical. Nestle and Hershey's, two huge international megacorps can't fly a rep over to West Africa, note if cocoa is being harvested by children, and threaten to stop buying from those cocoa farms?

And no, Soliloquy, you're not a bleeding heart liberal, you're someone that believes that your actions have effects and are affected by the lives of other people. Since when is it a liberal notion that child slavery, is, uh, absolutely despicable and revolting?

Bondcliff, you must be so lucky that you chose to be born in the US as a white male. Those little African children--how stupid of them to decide Africa was the place to be born! They obviously deserve their choice, since it's their fault, and we shouldn't care a lick about them.
posted by gramcracker at 11:02 AM on February 14, 2003

Oh, I said "call me a bleeding-heart liberal" because I am one, and proud of it. I'm well aware some think it an insult, but I fail to see how having a social conscience is a bad thing.

(I still fully intend to consume my existing stash of non-certified free trade chocolate though.)
posted by Soliloquy at 12:30 PM on February 14, 2003

On the question of roses: About ten years ago, I spent a day on an Ecuadorean rose plantation. This was south of Quito, a different area from the region the article talks about. Anyway, it was much smaller than the farms described in the article - a family-owned affair, before the industry had reached its current size. I don't remember seeing the sort of environmental or labor-related problems the article talks about, but then it was a weekend and we were guests of the owners. To some degree I doubt things were so bad - partly because the family's house was less than fifty yards from the greenhouses. But I have a vague memory (though I'm not certain at this point if I'm making it up) of being told not to touch the blooms because of the pesticides on them. I was young (and naive) enough then that I probably wouldn't have picked up on any signs of poor working conditions even if they had been staring me in the face.
posted by nickmark at 2:14 PM on February 14, 2003

i am glad i am vegan !
posted by kv at 3:37 PM on February 14, 2003