Candy company Mars uses cocoa harvested by kids in Ghana, CBS News investigation finds
Candy company Mars uses cocoa harvested by kids in Ghana, CBS News investigation finds
CBS News found children in Ghana as young as 5 years old using machetes nearly as big as themselves to harvest the cocoa beans that end up in some of America's most-loved chocolates like M&Ms and Snickers. Debora Patta reports.
And, according to John Oliver, even the chocolate companies that try to only source their product from child labor-free sources, they say they can't guarantee it. That's how much and how often children are used on these farms.
After seeing that John Oliver report, I'm never eating chocolate again. All I would be able to do would be to think of those kids.
And yes, I realize that other products I have are made from child labor, but chocolate is a pretty easy one to give up.
If you think chocolate is bad, sugar is worse.
What I've learned in the last few years is that every part of modern life has exploitation in it.
There are very few parts that aren't.
Sugar trade is so profitable you might just accidentally do slavery.
Blows my mind the laborers producing chocolate have never tasted it
The organizations fighting child labor in Ghana pretty much focus on getting the kids into school at all. It's a success story to enable a kid to go to school 5 days and only work on the cocoa farms 1 day a week. Completely eradicating it is impossible as long as families depend on that to make a living.
Meanwhile Americans eat beef from slaughter houses in the Midwest that use children as a cleaning service.
I remember when that article came out I had a passing thought that it was probably JBS Grand Island. Low and behold... Not fucking surprised.
I worked at a company that did some upgrades for that system and that place is vile. It was hard not to puke in the parking lot some days and I remember walking around the outside of building (left), and seeing all of the spray downs on the way to the freezer.
This is news? We've literally seen footage of it. This is common knowledge and something most candy companies take part in and always have
I would never buy products that are the result of child labor. Children have no sense of quality. The products would be sub-standard.
/s
That's why I'm going to start a competing company that only uses adult slave labour. Were all about attention to detail.
Our products are built by only the most discerning 6 year olds we could source. They know quality they will never have the luxury of experiencing for themselves when they see it (from miles away).
Little sticky handed bastards
It's the same with products from China. Chinese slaves just don't take pride in their work anymore.
The truth is, this is true for almost all chocolate.
I absolutely detest these incompetent trash journalists pretending like this is JUST a mars problem.
If you've ever eaten chocolate or seen chocolate on a shelf a child slave was used to acquire it.
There is not a single large-scale chocolate operation that does not utilize child slavery in the supply chain and pretending like this is 'only a mars issue' is fucking disgusting
Source? Especially that it's slavery and not just the children working on the family farm
John Oliver did a Halloween episode on the cocoa industry, and yea its slavery by a different name. Kids are getting sent to the "family farm" but never see their family again
Here's a wide variety of sources/dates to get you started since this is something that, much like the oil industry and climate change, has been massively lied about in the media in order to prevent any action from forming against the associated companies because that would actually negatively impact them. (Maybe, I personally doubt it since all 'off brand' and 'no name brand' shit is just name brand with shittier packaging now days, there's zero competition in this market and zero incentive for these corporations to improve when all they have to do is cause a controversy to offend an active group on twitter to have any serious discourse of their court cases disappear in a jumble of brainless arguments over superficial garbage).
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57522186 https://cocoarunners.com/chocopedia/the-dark-history-of-chocolate-slavery/ https://foodispower.org/human-labor-slavery/slavery-chocolate/ https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/12/mars-nestle-and-hershey-to-face-landmark-child-slavery-lawsuit-in-us
Additionally an honors thesis with all the associated references inside: https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=honorscollege_ehc
There's only extremely small farms that are not run by slavery and that chocolate does not make it to north american or european markets, regardless of what the stickers say.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-nestle-in-child-slavery-case.html https://www.courthousenews.com/candy-giants-sued-over-failure-to-end-child-labor-on-chocolate-plantations-in-ghana/
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-416_i4dj.pdf https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2022/06/28/backed-by-big-law-hershey-nestle-dodge-second-child-slavery-case/
The sugar industry and all related industries are industries of death, they only profit by stealing tax incentives after bribing politicians and using slavery, they don't need or want to make money they're just in it for the mergers and acquisitions which can suppress competition, hide losses, and increase their own power over the markets they work in, at the expense of everyone's health (with the amount of sugar in food these days) and at the expense of peoples freedom.
Here's an investigation by cbs that was released yesterday which has child slaves (as young as five years old) active as late as last week: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/candy-company-uses-cocoa-harvested-by-child-labor-cbs-news-investigation/ar-AA1kKztT
And here's basically the same findings from 20 years ago https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cocoa-and-slavery/ which, of course, all the associated companies said they 'fixed the problem with our third party suppliers that were using slavery without telling us' and then they get off by buying the judge.
Slavery never stopped we just exported it to get people to stop bitching.
Fair trade chocolate exists of course
I thought paying adults a hundred bucks a month was enough to live on so they didn't have to send their kids off to work because "cost of living is lower" ?
This is the cost of wage slavery in poverty stricken nations. The wealthy elite take the wealth of these workers and steal it by paying them nothing and importing their finished goods into the US and other wealthier nations.
You can find out all kinds of information about this on youtube by looking at "Why so expensive?" videos from business insider. We pretend like we outlawed slavery but it's still effectively alive and well.
Why is it so fucking hard for company executives to just be a decent human being? Damn.
Because Capitalism rewards greed and exploitative behaviour. Only natural for those kinds of people to rise to the top under this system.
If you want change, join/organize protests, unions, and Socialist movements.
It is not only in benefit of those people, but also of the countries they live in, and that's why capitalism rewards exploitative behavior.
And why is it so hard to prosecute them when they're not?
They make the rules.
Organize/join protests and unions if you don't like it. It's the only to make the ruling class do something in a class based society.
Why is it so fucking hard for company executives to just be a decent human being?
The 'piss you off' hard truth?
Because we enable it. We protect it. We allow it.
We enshrine their rights in corporation laws to do the things they want to do, put profits above people.
They are not policed, instead they are rewarded by paying those people who would police them not to do so.
As a society, we allow this to happen.
So then, what kind of people would gravitate to running a corporation, under those conditions? Potential unlimited power, with potential no oversight?
Fuck, I'm pissed just writing this.
B-but publicly owned regulated companies is Socialism
And nobody actually cares. You'd expect protests whenever something like this comes out? You'd expect people to at least kick up a stink. But, no move on to the next thing. Kinda sad how little outrage there actually is to this shit. Heck, even the general attitude towards this facf from the comments here is "shrugs Well what did you expect".
It has been an open secret for years. John Oliver did a show on it not long ago.
People become resigned to things they don't think they can change, especially (but not always) when it doesn't affect them personally.
Most people here are from the west and have been conditioned their entire life by western media to not think about it.
People understanding how fucked up their country is would mean protests and riots after all, and threaten those in power.
I think many people understand the capitalist economic arrangement they're in requires externalizing the suffering it causes. A lot of political causes people align with are based around morally absolving this conflict on an individual basis, almost in a ritualistic way, but in a way that doesn't threaten their position within the system. These are the same causes the system recognizes as the most legitimate as well, it's a self-reinforcing mechanism to deal with internalized discontent. Just consume the correct products with the right intentions and show that you've done this to be momentarily absolved, almost like a religion.
With their price increases over the years - all the while shrinking and worsening the product - I'm reaaaallly wondering where that money's ending up. Because they sure as shit aren't paying their workers enough either.
I have 3 guesses, but I only need 1.
It it a jackal?! It's a jackal, isn't it?
I have this list bookmarked on my phone, it only relates to vegan chocolate though. Cannot vouch for it's accuracy / methodology.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/40-child-labor-farms
Youths 12 and 13 years of age may work outside of school hours in non-hazardous jobs on farms that also employ >their parent(s) or with written parental consent.
Youths under 12 years of age may work outside of school hours in non-hazardous jobs with parental consent, but >only on farms where none of the employees are subject to the minimum wage requirements of the FLSA.
Local youths 10 and 11 may hand harvest short-season crops outside school hours for no more than 8 weeks >between June 1 and October 15 if their employers have obtained special waivers from the Secretary of Labor.
That is USA federal labor laws for agriculture and children. What the fuck is the USA on about now ? Something something child labor ?
That law basically means that family farms can pay children to do some chores on the farm. Factory farms don't get to skirt minimum wage laws.
My grandfather owns a small sheep farm in Pennsylvania, which is why I know this. Generally I don't think it's a problem to have children doing chores for money, just have to be sure those chores are safe. A 10 year old would never be in with the animals for example, but would be a great help for collecting firewood or putting water out in another pasture or what have you.
Imo this isn't really comparable to other child labor and it's most often done by a kid that wants a new video game or what have you.
There are states in the US with children working in butcheries.
It might be well and good for you, but for US law, "child labor" is absolutely NOT a solved problem.
Especially with Republicans wanting less regulation around the child labor.
But the laws in Ghana aren't meaningfully different either. Most children work on family cocoa farms. It's just that they often can't afford to limit the kid's tasks to the basics.
Family owned restaurants use it often enough so that they can get a little labor out of their kids and don't have to pay for after-school activities.
But the laws in Ghana aren't meaningfully different either. Most children work on family cocoa farms. It's just that they often can't afford to limit the kid's tasks to the basics.
I guess it's get another good reason for fertility and birth rate to plummet. Maybe those unborn are finally being given a choice.
They are still operating in Russia as well.
Cocoa is so obscure and bitter and gets processed so heavily to produce even a close approximation of "chocolate", why don't we just use broccoli? Process broccoli into broccolate, stop underpaying cocoa farmers who have to break the law and impoverish their own families and workers to make ends meet. Fuckn corpo clowns.
Because it's cheaper to use child labor than synthesize addictive phenylethylamine and add it to processed broccoli.
Could just eat a bag of sugar. Taste pretty much the same.
Hehehe!
It tastes better when it's processed by the hands of 3rd world country children... blood and sweat of the innocent, scrumptious!!!
And in other news, water is wet
Yeah? That water is produced by the sweat of children in sweatshops.
What the phrase I see floating around? There's no such thing as ethical capitalism?
Again...
And they just bought Hotel Chocolat, one of my favourite places to go for fancy chocolate, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67436228.
So now that place will go to shit, I'll have to find another one.
Bro, all of them take part in this.
The only way to know you're not exploiting children is to find an artisan who sources the cocoa themselves. Companies aren't going to pay extra to make sure their cheap materials are harvested ethically.
An artisan is less likely to be aware of their full supply chain than a large company is. If you buy cocoa from a company in Africa, you can request that they use ethical labour, but unless you can afford multiple surprise visits every year, there's no way to be sure... And even then if you are small they may decide that your business costs more effort than it's worth.
Unfortunate to see.
Nice! Giving kids jobs /s
i am so so so surprised
When i read title like this I can't help but wonder, are those kids going to better off without their income though ? My humble guess is that not every family have parents who can support their kids or have access to social care system that can prevent whole family to scrap by to be able to get by.
I think the answer is the parents of those kids need to be able to make a living that can support their children. Yes they might be worse off if they lose that income but that misses the bigger issue that children shouldn't need to earn an income to help support their families.
There was a CIA sponsored coup d'etat in Ghana that put the National Liberation Council government in power, they made sure resources in the country could be extracted by private entities at the lowest possible cost.
US foreign policy is based on exploiting resources around the world for private profit at the expense of the local population, hence the fascist coups they've implemented particularly in South America the last half century to ensure these sort of resources aren't nationalized or kept out of the hands of private corporations.
I think the answer is the parents of those kids need to be able to make a living that can support their children. Yes they might be worse off if they lose that income but that misses the bigger issue that children shouldn't need to earn an income to help support their families.