What about my chocolate???

When William Wilberforce was working to abolish the African slave trade, he had to deal with the insatiable appetite of the British people for sugar, which came from plantations in the West Indies that used slaves to grow and harvest sugar cane. Abolishing the slave trade could threaten the sugar supply!

Today there is widespread agreement that child slaves are being used in the cocoa industry (though no one seems to know how many). Could our fight against modern slavery threaten our chocolate supply?

Stop Chocolate Slavery provides background info on the issue (although much of it seems a bit dated, coming from 2001-2002) and provides a listing of chocolate brands that appear most likely to be slave-free.

In response to the reports about slave labor in the cocoa industry, the International Cocoa Initiative was formed, including industry members and others. The ICI has a fairly extensive site that admits the problem, tells how the initiative came to be and describes what steps are being taken.

Global March Against Child Labour is one of the organizations taking part in the ICI, but I didn’t see any good info on their site specifically about cocoa.

Free the Slaves is also listed as participating in the ICI, but once again I didn’t find a lot of current info at their site. I have written to them, asking if they can assess the progress up to now and the prospects for assuring that slavery will no longer be a part of cocoa production.

Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa has been working to end child and adult slavery for years, and his Web site also has some recent updates about the cocoa issue (written by his staff, of course, but one could check Senate records to verify his statements).

As far as I can tell, progress is being made, but not as much progress as one would like. It sounds as if child slavery still exists in the cocoa industry.

And I’m disappointed to see the paltry budget the ICI has to work with. Its site says,

The ICI is capitalised through its board members contribution. The annual budget is provided by industry members of the board made in the form of a grant against an approved budget.

In 2004 the total budget available to the foundation was Swiss Francs 1,523,055 (about 1,228,350 US Dollars). This was the first full operating year of the foundation.

So the information is now rather old, but think about this: the 2004 budget was about $1.2 million, provided by the ICI board members:

Mars Incorporated
Hershey Foods
Cadbury Schweppes
Nestlé
Kraft Foods
Ferrero

OK, stop right there. Those are six of the ICI’s 14 board members (other members include the European Cocoa Association; the International Confectionery Association; the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations; the International Trade Union Confederation; the US National Consumers League; Free the Slaves; and Global March).

But let’s look at those first six board members:

Mars Incorporated: The Mars Web site claims that Mars is an $18 billion-dollar company.

Hershey Foods: 2003 annual income was $457,584,000 (from their 2003 annual report, page 74).

Cadbury Schweppes: Their 2006 annual report, page 28, claims 2005 net profits of 700 million pounds (I don’t know what the exchange rate was back then, but today this would be U.S. $1.38 billion).

Nestlé: Their 2006 annual report, page 94, lists profits in 2005 of 4,438,000,000 Swiss Francs, which today equals U.S. $3.6 billion.

Kraft Foods: Their 2006 annual report, page 95, lists net earnings of $2.63 billion (they break it down by quarters).

Ferrero: I couldn’t find any financial info on their Web site, but their homepage says, “With global sales growing in country after country, Ferrero is today one of the largest confectionery companies in the world.”

The point is that it seems like these really, really huge companies could together pony up a bit more than $1.2 million (in 2004) to make sure that their products are not being produced by slaves.