Do You Really Want Change?
Many of the familiar candy bars we’ve grown up with, passed out for
Halloween, and chocolate we’ve baked into holiday treats, contain
ingredients created by enslaved child labor. This candy is available
now at a store near you, but the low, low prices are only possible
because of business practices that would turn your stomach.
Lawyers representing Nestle and Cargill were in the Supreme Court
yesterday because the companies for decades chose ingredients that
they knew were grown and processed with enslaved child labor.
The largest, most profitable multinational chocolate corporations
confirm they were aware the children were working without pay or
liberty, and that they were not working on their own family farms.
These corporations have publicly confirmed that they are buying
ingredients that they know use internationally trafficked children.
The case before the Supreme Court is not about whether these practices
exist today, or who knew about them. The question is why these large,
profitable US corporations have been able to get away with this for so
long without accountability or consequences.
They have long acknowledged the problem but have made no meaningful
progress in solving it, despite having the resources to do so.
Let’s be honest. Choosing to not take action will continue the problem
It doesn’t resolve it.
Choosing profits over ethics prolongs unacceptable colonial traditions.
Can we, as Americans, finally acknowledge that these corporations are
not going to change unless there are consequences? At what point is
the cost of not actually doing what is ethical, decent and right
become too much, unacceptable and intolerable? These corporations are
making conscious choices to see how long they can get away with it.
At what point do the corporation’s continued broken promises and lack
of meaningful action have consequences? How long are we going to allow
them to get away with this?
These are important questions the Supreme Court and US citizens need
to address right now.
This case before the Supreme Court is about making these corporations
accountable and having consequences for not really doing anything
about it. Shouldn’t there be consequences if that is the only thing
that will finally make these corporations do what they promised and
could have changed long ago?
These US corporations shouldn’t be exempt from laws and accountability
because they pretend that they are going to resolve this issue at some
date pushed further and further into the future when all they have
proven to us so far is they have made a choice to try to get away with
it for as long as they can.
Shouldn’t the US judicial system hold these US corporations legally
accountable for their actions (and knowingly choosing to not take
meaningful action) even when they occur out of sight in a faraway
country?
When is the US Justice System, and laws of our nation that make the US
such an economic powerhouse, going to give these corporations
meaningful consequences so they will finally make the change?
When US corporations enjoy the many benefits like freedom of speech,
laws and judicial process that are fundamental to doing business (such
as enforceable contracts and reliable, dependable financial
institutions), as well as use of our public assets (from our taxpayer
investment in roads, bridges, and airwaves to defense spending
investment that created GPS and the Internet they use), shouldn’t
these corporations also be held responsible too?
Here is our opportunity to do what is right. Our US corporations
should reflect American leadership and values.
America has a choice to make. This is our time to lead and not follow.
Please let our US Supreme Court justices know how important our
integrity and values are as a nation, a people and a US corporation.
Let us be leaders of doing what is right so we can hold our heads
high.
If you would like to support more ethical chocolate companies, put
your money where your mouth is and vote with your dollars,
www.slavefreechocolate.org has many suggestions.
Erin Andrews
Founder and CEO of indi chocolate (Seattle, WA)
Co-Founder of Cotton Tree Chocolate (a Belize company)
How Cheap is that Chocolate in the Window? by Ayn Riggs
How cheap is that chocolate in the window?- Ayn Riggs, Director of Slave Free Chocolate.
On December 1st the oral arguments for Doe. vs. Nestlé and Cargill will be presented to the Supreme Court of the United States. This case goes beyond simply seeking justice for children who were trafficked and held in slavery It will determine if American corporations are entitled to receive immunity if human rights abuses occur in their supply chains outside of the U.S. If Doe (boys, trafficked in from Mali and sold into slavery to work the cocoa farms of Côte d’ Ivoire) wins, then the United States will show the world that the US is on the side of the high ethical standards an humanity that we promote in our values. If Nestle and Cargill win, we are telling the world that slavery is trending again; turn a blind eye and enjoy consumer chocolate and other consumer goods at rock bottom prices.
At first glance it might be easy to side with these corporations. Maybe, we hope, these large companies were unaware of the fact that child slaves were used to harvest the cocoa that ends up in our chocolate bars. Go to any of the big chocolate company websites (Nestlé, Mars, Hershey Cadbury etc.) and you will find whole sections stating their ethical stance on sustainability. You will find photo after photo of happy farmers and smiling children donning school uniforms in company-built schools with big smiles on their faces and schoolbooks tucked under their arms. You will find they are part of an NGO called the World Cocoa Federation that is making all of this happen. Nothing looks amiss. Why would one question this? Why would they go through all of this work to deceive?
The answer is profit. Most of the big chocolate companies have shareholders. A CEO’s number one priority is profit. Any wrinkle in an effective profit strategy and the CEO will likely lose his or her job. The horrors of illegal child labor and child slavery were exposed in the late 1990s. , Congressional Representative, Eliot Engel, suggested a stamp on chocolate bars; “Child Slavery Free” so consumers would know what they were buying. To thwart this legislation, big chocolate companies including but not limited to Mars, Nestle, Cargill, Hershey and Cadbury all signed a non-binding protocol (Harkin Engel Protocol) in 2001 in which they admitted to knowing that they were profiting off the backs of children who were not going to school, were far from emergency medical services, were working with dangerous pesticides and that many were being trafficked into the cocoa farms from Mali and Burkina Faso and sold as slaves. They promised to clean all of this up. They formed an NGO, the World Cocoa Federation, which would act as the vehicle of remediation. The problem is that they didn’t fund this properly, so it acted merely as a public relations platform by funding paltry initiatives to provide photo ops for websites, with an aim to keep investigative journalists and activists in the dark. Big chocolate has been playing a cat and mouse game with many informed and enraged consumers, activists, and investigative journalists for the last 20 years. Sadly, they are winning. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the number of exploited children has only increased since the Harkin-Engel Protocol was signed.
I’ve watched all of this closely for the last 15 years. I founded Slave Free Chocolate.org to bring consumer awareness to the inhumane treatment of these two million children.
Fair-trade initiatives have the right idea but have failed to make a large enough dent to bring forth any change. Remediation has to include the large companies profiting from the situation. They have the money and power to make a difference and fix it.
Now we are right up on the end of Doe. vs. Nestlé and Cargill. What it comes down to is clear. Are we as a country going to be patting the backs of corporations for sticking to the strategy that puts a few more pennies in shareholder’s pockets? Or we are going to lead by example that humanity counts; that children matter.
As consumers we DO have the power to help these children. It is time we use it. Write to the complicit chocolate companies and your legislative representatives. Let’s engage our hearts for this cause and our voices on our social media audiences. You can find a list of offending companies, more details of the situation, and other ways to make your voice count on SlaveFreeChocolate.org.
Ayn Riggs is the founder and director of Slave Free Chocolate, slavefreechocolate.org @slavefreecocoa on twitter.
Nestlè & Cargill v. Doe Series: Corporate Liability, Child Savery and the Chocolate Industry
This story is by Chris Moxley of Just Security:
The world’s chocolate supply is undergirded by rampant practices of child labor under extremely hazardous conditions and, in some cases, slavery. According to the U.S. Bureau of International Labor Affairs, cocoa plantations in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana combine to produce 60 percent of the world’s cocoa. These plantations rely heavily on the labor of 2 million children working in hazardous conditions. Thousands of these child laborers are trafficked or forced into the work and may not be compensated for their labor, conditions amounting to slavery.
Read rest of the story HERE