“Beatings were a part of my life. Anytime they loaded you with the bags of cocoa beans and you fell while carrying them, nobody helped you. Instead they beat you and beat you until you picked it up again” (Alvarez). Little does the consumer know, dark chocolate has an even darker secret. Before cocoa beans become delicious, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate, they break the backs of innocent children. Even though West Africa has stringent child labor laws, multinational corporations use economic desperation to circumvent the rules; strict oversight and public condemnation is needed to end the problem. Child labor and child-trafficking in the cocoa industry is a nefarious, persistent condition originating in Ghana and the Ivory Coast. In 2010, research …show more content…
Additionally, poverty stricken families forced their own children to work on plantations for low wages. Children are sent to work as young as 5 but more typically between the ages of 12 to 16, causing them to stop their education in order to work full-time. These children see no other life outside of the plantations and because they can no longer attend school, they are stuck in a cycle of abuse, poverty, and despair. The only way to stop this increasingly dangerous form of child slavery is to make the governments of West African countries enforce their labor laws, but the loss of income from the cocoa crop without thousands of child laborers is stopping them. Consumers faced with the truth behind their chocolate bar may be willing to pay more to end these practices.
The awareness of the child slavery and trafficking has spread throughout the world by organizations reporting the truth behind the world’s favorite dessert. Many companies, such as Hershey, Nestle, Mars, Kraft, Godiva, ADM Cocoa, and Fowler’s Chocolate, support child slavery in Africa, the worst form of child labor. Not only are huge, influential companies aware that their cocoa is produced by young children working in dangerous conditions, they are not willing to make a