Cocoa Chocolate of Western Africa

Do You Eat Chocolate?

By: Brian Snodgrass

**Note: this is 1 of 5 videos that BBC produced.  Highly recommend watching the other 4! (Youtube)

I had no clue that about 60% of the chocolate in chocolate bars most likely come from cocoa beans in Western Africa (Ghana and Ivory Coast).  In addition, there is an enormous amount of child labor and child trafficking put into cocoa bean farming.  Children are smuggled from Burkina Faso into both Ghana and Ivory Coast because the tropical climate is perfect for cocoa bean farming.  Some of these children don’t see a single earning from the 10-12 hour days.  Billion dollar chocolate companies purchase thousands of pound of beans each year from western African ports.  

The next time I’m in a store I will most definitely think twice before purchasing a candy bar.  When I buy a chocolate bar I will be sure to look for the Fair Trade logo.   The logo (see below) is a certification system designed to allow consumers to identify goods which meet agreed standards.  In the chocolate case, the small farms don’t have market access therefore they rely on a middleman.  The middleman is usually unfair to the small farms.  Buying a product with the logo assures that the small farms in western African get a fair price, which allows them to have money for clothes, food, and school fees.

Fair Trade Logo (Google Images)

As a society we can address the problem of child labor and child trafficking by making the public more aware of the problem.  Airing documentaries on television is an excellent way to target the public.  Also labeling products is another way to address this problem.  As mentioned above, the fair trade logo has been slapped on a few big name products, which allows the consumer to identify goods that met agreed standards.  In addition, governments could sign laws or have international agreements to ban child labor/trafficking in western Africa.

 In 2000, BBC published a documentary about child labor, human trafficking, and farming cocoa beans in western Africa.  As a result, Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Eliot Engel developed the Harkin-Engel Protocol, signed in 2001.  The Harkin-Engel Protocol is an international agreement intended to end the worst forms of child labor and forced labor in the production of cocoa.  The US government attempted for the big name candy companies to put child labor free logos on their products, but the companies were not in favor of this idea.  

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Work Cited

Google Images.  Waywood.wordpress.com.  Blog. 15 March 2013 http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=fair+trade+logo&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=DEFDUd3MOZe64AObo4CwBQ&biw=1275&bih=668&sei=DkFDUY7LNs7h4APD7YD4CA#imgrc=AHi1nPqFjXjDGM%3A%3B8ByMM_U6bXrlbM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwaywood.files.wordpress.com%252F2008%252F07%252Ffairtrade_logo.png%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwaywood.wordpress.com%252F2008%252F07%252F22%252Ffair-trade-foul-play-spin%252F%3B1000%3B1175

Youtube. Chocolate The Bitter Truth 1 of 5 Child Trafficking BBC Panorama Investigation.  Runi Travel Videos.  15 March 2013.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD85fPzLUjo&playnext=1&list=PLOA_8QHMLBOFAQ8K%20ZWLT2NI40NASFCAMA