The bitter and the sweet - one-third of Africa's Ivory Coast cocoa beans picked by forced child labor - Editorial

Vegetarian Times, April, 2003 by Laurel Lund

As you know, we receive 5,000 letters a year from you, our readers--from ports as distant as Alaska and Zimbabwe. We read them all, and you keep us on our toes by raising important issues. Sometimes they're issues we've never thought about, but not always.

Heidi Klee recently emailed us a heartfelt letter, for example, expressing her dismay "that a magazine subscribed to by many people who care about animal rights appears to believe that human rights are irrelevant." Ms. Klee noted that in VT's articles about chocolate, we never mention "that 43 percent of the world's cocoa is supplied by chattel slave labor," the majority of whom are children. Because we have not discussed the involvement of slave labor in chocolate production, Ms. Klee "will not continue to support a magazine that contributes to the continuation of slavery."

We don't quite see it that way. As a health-related publication, we feel it's important to inform you that the flavonoids in chocolate--when enjoyed in moderation, of course--help reduce the incidence of blood dotting, a leading cause of heart attacks and strokes. So chocolate not only tastes good, it's good for you.

What's not good, we agree, is that a little more than one-third of the cocoa beans coming from small, scattered farms on Africa's Ivory Coast are picked by slave labor--many of whom are boys who have been tricked or sold into slavery. This situation is strongly condemned by VT and, among others, the Chocolate Manufacturers' Association (CMA), the trade group representing American chocolate makers.

Also decrying the practice is Ivory Coast Agriculture Minister Alfonse Douaty, but he insists that child slavery is a "clandestine phenomenon that exists on only a handful of the country's more than 600,000 cocoa and coffee farms." Even so, the Ivorian government is clamping down on child traffickers by expanding border patrols and running education campaigns to boost awareness of anti-slavery laws.

Until then, by the time cocoa beans reach American chocolatiers, free beans and slave beans have been so thoroughly blended in warehouses, ships, trucks and rail cars that it's difficult to tell which were picked by slave labor and which were harvested by free field hands working for legitimate producers.

VT in no way condones slavery in any form. But to boycott the entire chocolate industry in protest would be to take away the livelihoods of almost two-thirds of poor Ivorian farmers who do make their living honestly. That, to VT, is also a violation of human rights.

Perhaps a more positive way to help eradicate forced child labor might be to raise awareness of the issue--just as Ms. Klee has done--and identify appropriate solutions. In fact, the World Cocoa Foundation, the US Department of Labor, USAID, the UN's International Labor Organization and a number of European and West African governments are working together to better understand the scope of the problem--and to eliminate it. We applaud them!