You can find fair trade chocolate here:Chocolate comes from cocoa, and the cocoa supply is controlled by a small number of companies worldwide that are allowed to function with limited accountability. Hershey's and M&M/Mars alone control two-thirds of the $13 billion U.S. chocolate candy market. The result? An industry marred with child slavery, unsafe working conditions and a cycle of poverty with no end in sight for cocoa farmers. Chocolate companies are not held accountable for sourcing practices, and despite their knowledge about the travesties that occur on cocoa farms, they lack the will to change.
The U.S. chocolate industry has faced multiple deadlines requiring new protocol, and yet little has changed. Under pressure from Congress, in the Harken-Engel Protocol, the U.S. chocolate industry agreed to voluntarily take steps to end child slavery on cocoa farms by July of 2005. This deadline has since passed, and the chocolate industry has failed to comply with the terms of this agreement.
So in July 2005, International Labor Rights Fund filed suit against Nestlé in Federal District Court on behalf of a class of children who were trafficked from Mali into the Ivory Coast and forced to work twelve to fourteen hours a day with no pay, little food and sleep, and frequent beatings. What was Nestlé's response to court questioning? "We are only buyers of a product."
http://www.newdream.org/consumer/cocoa.php
http://www.gxonlinestore.org/chocolate.html
Great post, Ellie!
ReplyDeleteI work for the International Labor Rights Fund (www.laborrights.org), one of the organizations working against child labor in the cocoa industry and focusing specifically on Nestle. You can send an e-mail to Nestle to tell them to stop using child labor here: http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/Nestle07.
And sign up for our e-mail list on our website for the latest updates!
-Tim
Isn't "we are just buyers of a product" akin to Adolph Eichmann's statement that he was just a paper processor?
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