Essay On Chocolate Labour In West Africa

While Europe and the United States account for most chocolate consumption, the confection is growing in popularity in Asia and market forecasts are optimistic about the prospects in China and India (Nieburg, 2013, para 9). According to the CNN Freedom Project, the chocolate industry rakes in $83 billion a year, surpassing the Gross Domestic Product of over a hundred nations (“Who consumes the most chocolate,” 2012, para 3).

The novel Between Shades of Grey by Ruta Sepetys does an excellent job illustrating the troubling issue of child labor. The extent of child labor in a country is directly linked by the nature and extent of poverty within it. Child labor deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity. It is detrimental to physical and mental development. Today, there are an estimated 246 million child laborers around the globe. This irritating social issue is not only violates a nation’s minimum age laws , it also involves intolerable abuse, such as child slavery, child trafficking, debt bondage, forced labor, and illicit activities. In Between Shades of Grey , Lina and her ten year old brother are unrightfully charged 25 years of

In the article “ Are We Running Out Of Chocolate?” by Kathy WIlmore it states that the demand for chocolate in the world is becoming higher and higher and creating problems across the globe. For one thing, the demand for chocolate is rising around the world. According to the article “cocoa prices have risen by more than 60% since 2012. When manufacturers have to pay more for raw materials [such as cocoa the main ingredient in chocolate], sooner or later they pass the costs onto consumers”(Wilmore 9).

Not only is their chocolate unhealthy, it doesn’t taste very good either, but the corruption lies deeper than their consumer products. Within the countries of South America, where Hershey’s, and essentially all chocolate companies import their cocoa from, the cocoa farmers are not what they seem. On the outside they appear to be men working hard at gathering the raw substance, but look into the darker areas of the farms, and you find children, maybe just barely the age of 10, perhaps older, but more likely younger. These children aren’t the sons and daughters of the farmers though. These children are the

As mentioned earlier, 70% of cocoa beans come from plantations in western African countries. However, most workers on these plantations are child slaves who are abused, not paid, and confined to grueling labor for years and years. Many of these unfortunate children aren’t over the age of sixteen yet they are forced to work from dusk till dawn. To add to this, there are a great amount of dangerous throughout the plantation. These include exposure to toxic, agricultural chemicals on the cocoa beans, being forced to use dangerous machetes in work, and being crushed by hundred pound bags of packed cocoa beans. The conditions that they live in are no better either. From sleeping on planks of wood as a bed to being fed the bare minimum of the cheapest food, most of these children don’t even receive basic education. One of the worst parts of this tragedy is that chocolate companies know what is happening yet they continue to receive cocoa from child slaves, and then they sell the public this deplorable

If cocoa farms did not use children as workers, adults would be getting more pay, which would allow them to afford adult workers, which would not endanger the lives of young

Chocolate is beneficial to some parts of cote D’ivoire by helping farmers and the ecomy. The bad things due to child labor and harming the environment implies that chocolate making must be stopped. It’s not safety for the community’s environment nor

Hershey has bought and produced tons of chocolate for over 50 years that has had the blood, sweat and tears of the not only the children on the Ivory Coast, but the adults as well. The way that Hershey has been able to sell to their consumers with very low prices on all their products is because they buy from the cocoa farms that have child slaves. Many of which were taken from their homes, sold or needed to provide for their families. They would come work for cocoa farmers and get paid little to nothing. Children who work on the Ivory Coast usually are between ages 12 and 16,

“At 6 a.m., 10-year-old Emmanuel wakes and readies himself for a day of labor in the cocoa fields. Along the way, he watches as other kids walk in the opposite direction - toward school. He reaches the fields at sunrise and uses his machete to slice ripe cocoa pods from the tree. Later, he carries the cocoa pods he’s harvested from the field, hacks them open and gathers the pods, which will later be used to make chocolate” (Huffington Post). In Africa, many children are denied the basic human right to learn like Emmanuel, as they toil endlessly on the gruesome cocoa plantations in Ghana and the Ivory Coast. The endless suffering of children in Africa is subject to consumers who crave the sweet treat that comes in many shape and sizes; Chocolate.

Child slavery and child labor on chocolate plantations is one of the world’s greatest concerns at the moment. Chocolate plantations are specifically mentioned because chocolate is such a large industry and many kids, particularly in tropical African countries, are affected by child labor. In Côte d’Ivoire alone, around 15,000 children are slaves working on chocolate, or cacao, plantations. (american.edu) This problem is concerning because not only is it unethical, but child labor and, therefore, child slavery, violates basic human rights. (foodispower.org) Also, child labor in the chocolate industry often leads to human trafficking, which according to the United Nations General Assembly is illegal when the forced movement of a person is used for the end goal of profit. (american.edu) Child labor and slavery still exist today because of the lack of knowledge the general public has about the labor on the farms.

From the standpoint of the original Hershey milk chocolate bar, Milton Hershey is the original creator of developing an efficient chocolate manufacturing process during the late 1800s. Milton Hershey developed a method to produce chocolate that tasted delicious, could be created in bulk, and sold to consumers at competitively affordable price. This process begins with obtaining ingredients used to create a chocolate base. Though Hershey’s main factory is in Pennsylvania, the cacao bean is the main ingredient used that needs to be imported outside of the United States. The cacao beans from cacao trees only thrive in tropical climates. These trees grow in tropical rain forests of Brazil and Indonesia. Once the trees produce a significant amount of cacao beans, Hershey hires farmers to pick the cacao beans off of trees. When

The transportation cost of chocolate was high and small mom and pop stores commonly supplied chocolate made locally. Today you would be hard-pressed to find local chocolate in the United States, with the shelves dominated by four major brands. The

As of 2013, 168 million children worldwide are engaged in child labor. The Sub-Saharan Africa region has the second highest number of child laborers in the world; about 59 million as of 2012 (borenproject.org). Child labor refers to the employment of children in any work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend school, and is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful (ilo.org). Children work in dangerous conditions, harming their mental and physical state. More than half of these children are exposed to the worst forms of child labor. More should be done to end child labor. These children experience unfair treatment, hazardous living conditions, and

Although there are many positives to the social and economic sustainability of chocolate for consumers, those who harvest these commodities may not say so. As we saw in “Chocolate The Bitter Truth”, there are huge amounts of child labour used in the harvest of coca plants. These children are most often taken away from their parents in poor cities, and are forced to work for a man they are sold to. These kids do not attend school, and work with machetes for

Child labour is much worse than it is portrayed by the media. Child labour includes the employment of children in the business, food, clothing industries that is considered to be illicit or exploitative (Bonnet, 2017). It denies children their basic rights such as protection and freedom from exploitation. Children, instead of going to school, work in dangerous and physically damaging work due to limited access to resources. Reliable statistics are scare as child labour continues to grow each day in third world countries such as Africa. An abundance of evidence supports the idea that child slavery still exists in modern societies, where an estimation of 218 million children between 5 and 17 years are affected by slavery around the world (ILO,