Chocolate

A United Nations agency, the International Labor Organization (ILO) issued a report saying tens of thousands of children are being exploited, including many working on plantations in western and central Africa. Among members of the U.S. association are Hershey Foods Corp., M&M Mars and Nestle USA.

.U.S. retail sales of chocolate in 1999 totaled $12.9 billion, according to government statistics. working conditions in the Ivory Coast and Ghana, the two leading growers of cocoa. An official of the organization said he could not yet estimate the amount of money to be contributed. According to the ILO report, poverty-stricken parents are sending their children into forced labor. Those children, according to the agency, often work up to 20 hours a day in difficult conditions. Forty-three percent of the world's cocoa beans, the raw material in chocolate, come from small, scattered farms in this poor west African country. And on some of the farms, the hot, hard work of clearing the fields and harvesting the fruit is done by boys who were sold or tricked into slavery. Most of them are between the ages of 12 and 16. Some are as young as 9.

Forty-three percent of the world's cocoa beans, the raw material in chocolate, come from small, scattered farms in this poor west African country. And on some of the farms, the hot, hard work of clearing the fields and harvesting the fruit is done by boys who were sold or tricked into slavery. Most of them are between the ages of 12 and 16. Some are as young as 9.

Cocoa beans come from pods on the cacao tree. To get the 400 or so beans it takes to make a pound of chocolate, the boys cut 10 pods from the trees, slice them open, scoop out the beans, spread them in baskets or on mats, and cover them to ferment. Then they uncover the beans, put them in the sun to dry, bag them and load them onto trucks to begin the long journey to America or Europe.

In the first three months of this year, more than 47,300 tons of Ivory Coast beans -- prized for their quality and abundance -- were shipped to the United States. By the time the beans reach the processors, those picked by slaves and those harvested by free field hands have been jumbled together in warehouses, ships and rail cars. By the time they reach consumers, free beans and slave beans are so thoroughly blended that there is no way to know which is which. That some chocolate has the bitter taste of human misery is accepted by many familiar with the conditions in west Africa. The State Department's year 2000 human rights report concluded that some 15,000 children between the ages of 9 and 12 from poorer neighboring countries of Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin and Togo have been sold into forced labor on northern Ivory Coast plantations in recent years.

America's biggest cocoa processors are ADM Cocoa in Milwaukee, a subsidiary of Decatur, Ill.-based Archer Daniels Midland; Barry Callebaut, which has its headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland; Minneapolis-based Cargill; and Nestle USA of Glendale, Calif., a subsidiary of the Swiss food giant.

World cocoa prices have fallen almost 24 percent since 1996, from 67 cents a pound to 51 cents. This forces impoverished farmers to look for the cheapest labor they can find.

Link to an article about chocolate in E! Magazine: http://www.emagazine.com/july-august_2001/0701gl_eating.html