Chocolate - Bittersweet

While my consumption of chocolate has diminished over the years and as I opt more for dark chocolate versus milk chocolate, I am still a huge chocolate lover. And the chocolate industry has billions of ardent fans. Think of the huge amounts of chocolate sold over Valentine's Day; and as Easter comes upon us, those chocolate eggs; and of course, who can forget Halloween? Chocolate is everywhere. Among us friends, it's a stress-reliever too and sometimes a sinful indulgence. But it slips my mind, quite often, that most things chocolate are made from cocoa. Reading a friend's blog and then doing a bit of searching myself, I was reminded of something I have read about in the past, and it makes me think twice about that bar of dark chocolate sitting on my kitchen counter....

A large part of the chocolate industry's cocoa comes from the Ivory Coast (or Cote d'Ivoire) on the continent of Africa. About 70% of the world's cocoa beans are in fact grown in that country. Some of those cocoa farmers employ children - children who are younger than 13. The situation is a conflicting one as these children, who would rather not be working and going to school instead, are sent out to the fields because of the poverty their families face. While US lawmakers and international human rights groups worked to eradicate this problem, it is far from being eradicated in the villages of the Ivory Coast.


Here is a link to a recent article summarizing a recent follow-up by US lawmakers. And here is the original article that I read on my friend's blog called "Chocolate's Bittersweet Economy". You should go to this article because you'll see all the pictures that accompanied the article....

Here's an excerpt from the article by Christian Parenti:
"Outside the village of Sinikosson in southwestern Ivory Coast, along a trail tracing the edge of a muddy fishpond, Madi Ouedraogo sits on the ground picking up cocoa pods in one hand, hacking them open with a machete in the other and scooping the filmy white beans into plastic buckets. It is the middle of the school day, but Madi, who looks to be about 10, says his family can't afford the fees to send him to the nearest school, five miles away. "I don't like this work," he says. "I would rather do something else. But I have to do this."

Sinikosson, accessible only by rutted jungle tracks, is a long way from the luxurious chocolate shops of New York and Paris. But it is here, on small West African farms like these, that 70 percent of the world's cocoa beans are grown - 40 percent from just one country, Ivory Coast. It's not only the landscape that is tough. Working and living conditions are brutal. Most villages lack electricity, running water, health clinics or schools. And to make ends meet, underage cocoa workers, like Madi and the two boys next to him, spend their days wielding machetes, handling pesticides and carrying heavy loads.

This type of child labor isn't supposed to exist in Ivory Coast. Not only is it explicitly barred by law - the official working age in the country is 18 - but since the issue first became public seven years ago, there has been an international campaign by the chocolate industry, governments and human rights organizations to eradicate the problem. Yet today child workers, many under the age of 10, are everywhere. Sometimes they're visibly scarred from their work. In the village of Lilo a young boy carrying a machete ambled along a road with a bandaged shin. He said he had cut his leg toiling in a cocoa patch."