The Modern African Slave Trade

Why do people love chocolate so much? Is it the smell, the taste, the texture or something more?

• The word Chocolate comes from the Aztecs of Mexico .. who associated Chocolate with the Goddess of fertility.

• Chocolate melts below body temperature ... melts in the mouth ... and releases Serotonin in the brain... which produces feelings of pleasure & increased heart rate ( almost same as the pleasure of kissing but last four time as long )

• It also triggers dopamine release similar to the rush of cocaine ...

• The Aztecs and their neighbors, the Mayans, believed chocolate transmitted knowledge and power to those who consumed it

Ok many more pluses for eating chocolate , but how far will you go for the pleasure ?

Chocolate is a sweet business with disgusting ingredients – like child slavery. Attempts are being made to change the industry by pressing consumers, but Interpol says – free the children, prosecute the criminals.

Fifty-four children of seven different nationalities were rescued from plantations, and eight people were arrested in connection with the illegal recruitment of children during a two-day operation in Cote d’Ivoire, codenamed “BIA”.

Pure greed has driven large corporates, to source the cheapest raw ingredients to produce the cheapest product to enable them to buy market share, and what’s cheaper than paying workers nothing?

The Major choclate companies are still usung child labour

thousands of Africa’s children, particularly in Côte d’Ivoire, are forced to labour in the production of cocoa. They are modern-day slaves, bonded to their employers and forced against their will to work in hazardous and heartbreaking conditions. Denied access to basic education, medical care, and in many cases, the comfort and reassurance of their own families, these children have no voice and little hope for the future

Many chocolate companies, including Hershey (the largest in North America), use cocoa beans from the Ivory Coast to make their products. The Ivory Coast of Africa is the largest cocoa-producing area in the world, but unfortunately it is so at the extent of child labor exploitation.


Young boys whose ages range from 12 to 16 have been sold into slave labor and are forced to work in cocoa farms in order to harvest the beans, from which chocolate is made, under inhumane conditions and extreme abuse.


Slave traders are trafficking boys ranging from the age of 12 to 16 from their home countries and are selling them to cocoa farmers in Cote d'Ivoire. They work on small farms across the country, harvesting the cocoa beans day and night, under inhumane conditions. Most of the boys come from neighboring Mali, where agents hang around bus stations looking for children that are alone or are begging for food. They lure the kids to travel to Cote d'Ivoire with them, and then the traffickers sell the children to farmers in need of cheap labor


Many of these kids live and work in horrendous conditions for the pleasure
others  which illustrate that the existence of misery in one part of the world and joy in another part are no longer divorced as nations are connected together in a globalized web of trad3




Approximately 290 000 kids are slaves in WestAfrica helping to produce 70% of the world's chocolate!   They toil in abusive labor conditions in West Africa’s cocoa fields

Cocoa companies pay prices so low that many cocoa farmers cannot meet their families’ basic needs


The secret ingredient in that creamy, delicious chocolate bar? The swear and labor  in West Africa, forced to work long hours for no pay and little food. Doesn't taste so sweet anymore, does it? Like chocolate, child slavery comes in many colours. But usually brown. Its victims are poor, desperate kids - the most marginalized of society


Nestles , Hersheys , M&M Mars, Cadbury, Nestle and other famous names,guilty as charged

More aricles of interest

http://humantrafficking.change.org/blog/view/is_hersheys_secret_ingredient_child_slavery

http://socyberty.com/history/chocolateby-slave-labour/

http://ihscslnews.org/view_article.php?id=159

http://wspus.org/2007/04/child-slavery-and-the-chocolate-factory/

http://vision.ucsd.edu/~kbranson/stopchocolateslavery/newsandinformation.html

Slave-free chocolate brands:

• Equal Exchange (Whole Foods, New Seasons)
• Endangered Species (Whole Foods, Target, New Seasons)
• Rapunzel (Whole Foods)
• Dagoba (at most Oregon grocery stores)
• Green and Black’s (available at Target!)
• Newman’s Own (New Seasons, Whole Foods)
• Cloud Nine
• Tropical Source (New Season’s, Whole Foods)
• Shaman
• Any fair-trade certified brands (look for the black and white Transfair logo
  

Eat chocolate responsibly