Not so sweet: Post-Halloween reflections on chocolate’s dark side

cocoa beans

Though Halloween has passed, there are likely still at least a few chocolates hiding in the cupboard somewhere, ready to be unwrapped and greedily devoured.  Before eating another bite of these treats, readers may want to give consideration to the origins of their trick-or-treating spoils, as the truth behind chocolate production is far from sweet.

Child slavery is rampant in the cocoa industry.  There are an estimated 150,000 child slaves in Cote d’Ivoire alone, part of an estimated 285,000 children working on cocoa plantations throughout Africa.  Every day, slave traders sell human beings into servitude for as little as two or three dollars.

Giant multinational cocoa purchasers, well aware of the rampant abuses on cocoa plantations, push the price down so low that many farmers resort to child labor.  In 2001, Pascal Affi N’ Guessan, Prime Minister of Cote d’Ivoire, the world’s number one producer of cocoa, named a price ten times higher than the (then) current price to ensure quality of life for Cote d’Ivoire’s farmers.

Free-market ideology has failed the cocoa producers of the region, leaving them left to fend for themselves in the chaotic environment of a worldwide commodities market, where fluctuating prices oftentimes dip below the cost of production.  For substantial portions of the last decade, for instance, the worldwide commodity price for cocoa has been below the cost of production, almost guaranteeing the perpetuation of abusive labor practices in the region.

Also, as the governments of cocoa producing nations rely heavily on the income generated from cocoa production, when prices dive, social services in health and education are cut.  In cocoa producing nations, failure to set a minimum fair price hurts not only the cocoa producers themselves, but all of society.

Chocolate manufacturers have a way of insuring that prices stay low, despite the devastating impact upon the farmers of West Africa.

Hershey’s and M&M’s Mars, two of the world’s largest chocolate companies, have refused to take any steps to insure that child slavery and other abuses are eliminated from cocoa plantations.  Multi-million dollar lobbying efforts protect their bottom lines and guarantee that the plantations’ horrendous conditions remain under wraps.

In 2001, threatened with the passage of a measure in the United States House of Representatives that would have called for manufacturers to label their products ‘slave free’ or not, the United States chocolate industry fought back with a fierce lobbying effort, arguing that the ‘slave free’ label requirement would actually end up hurting the cocoa producers of West Africa.  Hiring Bob Dole and George Mitchell to lobby on their behalf, the Chocolate Manufacturer’s Association successfully defeated passage of the bill.

Later that year, bowing to intense international pressure, chocolate manufacturers agreed to the ‘Harkin-Engel’ protocol, named for Senator Tom Harkin and Eliot Engel, who facilitated its creation.  Major signatories included the Chocolate Manufacturer’s Association, Hershey’s, M&M’s Mars, the government of Cote d’Ivoire, and the child labor office of the International Labor Organization.

Critics of the Harkin-Engel protocol note that the measure, the only major effort to date by manufacturers to reduce suffering in the region, does nothing to prevent the root cause of the problems in the cocoa industry: unfair pricing.

Many activists have rallied around a simple solution put forward by organizations such as Global Exchange and the International Labor Rights Forum: a guaranteed minimum floor price for cocoa.  Setting a floor price would remove the destructive fluctuations and undervaluing inherent in the ‘free’ market system and replace them with a standardized fair pricing system, finally addressing the root cause of the abusive labor practices in West African cocoa production.