Greetings everybody! I am still digging out from nearly three feet of snow. It is that icy, hard kind of snow, so it is a longer and slower task than I thought it would be; I am trying to do the independent woman thing, however, with the snow being so heavy, I have to take it slow. I should have taken that free snow blower when I had the chance. Now I am back, stronger than ever, with important information.
Valentine’s Day (tomorow) may be for lover’s, but be careful from whom you purchase your chocolate
or cocoa. Do not use chocolate that is tainted with child slave labor. This problem started back in 1998 and by the year 2000 the U.S. State Department estimated that 15,000 children were actively enslaved on cocoa farms on the Ivory Coast in West Africa. In 2002, two reporters from the Philadelphia Inquirer published a series outlining the brutal conditions suffered by boys as young as nine who work in the cocoa fields. The series explained how slave traders would lure boys from Mali with promises of high wages and gifts of bicycles in exchange for picking beans from the cacao trees in Ivory Coast. Frequently the boys were told they could earn as much as $175.00 per year (about five times what they could make in the same period in their home countries), and could leave at any time. But once on the plantations, some of the boys were rarely paid, and more often beaten with chains, whips and switches. When they tried to leave, they were beaten and sometimes killed.
There is still an ethical battle raging between the Chocolate Manufacturer’s Association and, let’s say, “the people who fight for ethical treatment of children.” Rep. Eliot Engel(D-NY), crafted a rider for an agriculture appropriations bill that happened to be on the floor of the House of Representatives the week the series came out in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The rider set aside $250,000.00 to implement a system for labeling chocolate and cocoa products. The proposed labels would have read “No Child Slave Labor” , similar to “Dolphin-Safe” labels on tuna cans.
Engel’s bill passed in the House of Representatives that June, but the chocolate makers feared that this bill would taint their image and cause a disatrous public relations headache to their industry. So, they mustered support from a handful of high-powered senators (from both the Democratic and Republican parties of the USA), and they lobbied Congress before the Senate could pass a similar bill. Sadly, the bill was never initiated.
This information was taken from http://www.alternet.org/story/12373 So, use discretion when buying your chocolate or cacao.