Chocolate's Dark Secret

“You cannot make chocolate without the cocoa bean.” -- Willy Wonka

My 1964 edition of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has a special place on my bookshelf. Its jacket is ripped and tattered. Its brown stains are presumably from chocolate chips or hot cocoa. In Charlie, Mr. Willy Wonka owns a magical chocolate factory.

In the book, Wonka’s factory workers are African pygmies called Oompa-Loompas. Wonka discovered them in the jungle living in trees, eating caterpillars, and desperately longing for their favorite food, the cocoa bean. With the approval of their leader, Wonka smuggled the entire tribe of Oompa-Loompas to his factory where he pays them in cocoa beans and chocolate. They’re so thrilled with their environment that they sing and dance while working.

Chocolate is one of my basic food groups. I don’t go a day without it some form. However, some recent knowledge about the chocolate industry is causing me to change my chocolate-buying habits. It’s terrible news, bad enough to break the heart of every Oompa-Loompa.

The information is so startling you’d think it too was a work of fiction. Chocolate comes from cocoa beans which are grown on plantations in countries near the equator. West Africa generates much of the world’s cocoa bean supply. More specifically, Ivory Coast is the largest supplier. I’ve read that it produces anywhere from 40-70 percent of the world’s cocoa supply.

The plantations are not serviced by Oompa-Loompa’s, but by another small, poor hungry creature: children. Children that are smuggled. Children as young as five. They are not paid, sent to school, or treated with dignity. They are beaten if they try to run away. In today’s lingo this is known as Human Trafficking.

European film makers Miki Mistrati and U. Roberto Romano made a documentary called “The Dark Side of Chocolate” that can viewed here at cultureunplugged.com. Watching the 46-minute film is truly worthwhile. It reveals how children are smuggled from the country of Mali to Ivory Coast. Mistrati and Romano find children working in the cocoa plantations. Lies, cover-ups, and blind-eyes are some of the film’s most notorious characters.

Here are some of the startling statistics about the chocolate industry:

· A UNICEF study reports that 200,000 children are trafficked yearly in West and Central Africa (Huffingtonpost.com).

· An estimated 100,000 children are slaves in the cocoa plantations of West Africa (slavefreechocolate.org).

· Some 1.8 million children aged 5 to 17 years work on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast and Ghana, according to the fourth annual report produced by Tulane University (slavefreechocolate.org).

· The report says 40 percent of the 820,000 children working in cocoa in Ivory Coast are not enrolled in school, and only about 5 percent of the Ivorian children are paid for their work (slavefreechocolate.org).

Nestle and Barry Callebaut, the world’s largest chocolate company; as well as food-ingredient companies Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland all have head offices in the Ivorian Coast city of Abidjan. Hershey purchases its chocolate from Nestle, ADM, and Cargill. In 2001, two U.S. congressmen drafted the Harkin-Engel Protocol which intended to end the child labor atrocities in the cocoa industry by 2008. All of the big chocolate makers signed on in support. However not many, and especially Hershey, found it necessary to follow through.

Slowly, progress is happening. According to stopthetraffik.org, Cadbury is starting to produce some fair-trade chocolate. Green and Blacks, which is owned by Cadbury, pledged to go completely fair-trade by the end of 2010. Kraft, who owns Cadbury has pledged to honor Cadbury’s fair-trade agreements. Mars has pledged to go completely traffick-free by 2020. Nestle has made their four-fingered Kit-Kat fair trade in the UK and Ireland. Hershey, the chocolate king of North America is severely dragging its feet.

The chocolate companies have to do more. They’re the ones with the wealth to create change. According to Ayn Riggs of slavefreechocolate.org the plantation owners and the fair trade groups need help. “It’s important that we don’t lose sight of the obligations of the Engel-Harkin Protocol. The fair trade organizations don’t have the resources to restructure the farms using child labor. Big candy does and should do what they said they would do many years ago,” said Riggs.

I know there are plenty of causes to support these days. But you can make a difference in this one without donating tons of cash. Maybe start with prayer. Pray that these children would be freed, that the smugglers would be stopped, and that the big chocolate companies would go “slave free.” Educate yourself. Spread the word. It will take discipline and information, but buying fair-trade products will have an impact. Write to the big chocolate companies to end human trafficking in the chocolate plantations. The anti-human trafficking group Oasis has a campaign to pressure Hershey to go fair-trade. (Oasisusa.org and raisethebarhershey.org).

Just the other day I watched the bunny-eared kindergartners at my school take part in an Easter egg hunt. I doubt that many West African children have Easter egg hunts. But they shouldn’t be smuggled, enslaved, and beaten for the profits of the big chocolate companies. They should be in school and having child-like fun. Or singing and dancing like Oompa-Loompas.