Chocolate's Dark Secret
Lots of people love chocolate, I am guilty of this affection myself. When I was young I used to sneak entire bags of semi-sweet chocolate morsels, that my parents bought for baking cookies and brownies, down into my bedroom where I would feed my addiction. I still to this day love chocolate, but now I refuse to buy it. Some may ask why while others already know that I am going to tell you even if you don't want to know. I must tell you or else I will never be able to eat chocolate again.
Chocolate corporations, Nestle, M&M Mars, and Hersheys just to name a few, purchase their cocoa from giant plantations in the Ivory Coast, a small poverty stricken nation which is located east of Liberia and west of Ghana in western Africa. The United Nations International Labor Organization estimates over 284,000 child laborers work on these plantations and that 12,000 of them have been trafficked illegally. So whether you like it or not, whenever you purchase chocolate manufactured by one of the corporations who buy their cocoa from these plantations you are supporting the enslavement of child workers.
Since the financial success of these plantations depends on their ability to sell thier crop, chocolate corporations have the ability to exert great pressure on the plantation owners to change the way they do business. In fact about six years ago some of these chocolate manufacturers were required to give testimony in front of the US Senate about these slave labor allegations. The chocolate corporations were given five years to clean up the child slavery problem. That deadline has passed and child labor on these plantations still persist.
The basis for this article came from an article printed in the "indy" entitled "Bitter Sweet Chocolate: Slave labor in the confection industry" by James Meece