Chocolate Origins Part 4: Our Guilty Pleasure

The Horrible Truth

Westerners, in particular, generally want only what is the least expensive. We must learn that there is much, much more to making a good chocolate choice. The large chocolate makers sell 100 billion dollars of chocolate a year. Child-slaves don’t get paid, an easy way to lower your costs and raise your profits! They will not change, unless individuals choose only slave-free chocolate. Chocolate makers must prove to you that they make what they offer you without slavery in any part of their supply chains!

The absence of regulation, corporate greed, and the lack of responsibility by major chocolate companies has created a seemingly unbreakable system. Major human rights violations and child slavery will continue as long as it’s profitable.

The chocolate trade atrocities happen thousands of kilometers away from us. We can help end these horrors by making the best chocolate choice, slave-free.

Children do NOT want to be in slavery working in deplorable conditions, in 45° temperatures and forced to:

  • climb tall trees to harvest cacao pods
  • be exposed to toxic pesticides
  • wield heavy and sharp machetes, often injuring themselves
  • carry dangerously-heavy loads of25 kg or more

Children forced to work on cacao plantations often have many scars from cutting open cacao pods, and far worse, from beatings. Children do not see their families again, do not go to school, have no time for play, and have no protection from adults.