An article “Is There Child Slavery in Your Chocolate?” by John Robbins explains how chocolate companies supply their cocoa, and how it’s produced. Cocoa is grown in Ivory Coast in West Africa in high tropical climates. Robbin explains that West Africa is the world’s largest cocoa bean supplier it provides 43 percent of world supply. Hersey’s has by far the worst practices and policies, they enslave children from ages 11 and up, or even children as young as 5. They utilize them for abusive labor they force children to work the cocoa farm fields. Hersey’s is the world’s largest chocolate supplier they purchase their cocoa from West Africa. However, Heresy’s supply practices are by far the worst they enforce abusive labor as well as human trafficking …show more content…
and child labor. Robbin points out that Ivory Coast has the largest widespread of child labor in the cocoa farm fields. Hersey’s has been very secretive about their production. Reporters have been investigating the cocoa farm fields and on their most recent visit they found children that were being abused of out in the fields these children have no only been abused but have also been enslaved ‘Anytime they loaded you with bags (of cocoa beans) and you fell while carrying them, nobody helped you instead they would beat you and beat you until you picked it up again.’ (Robbins 1) The children were stolen, or purchased from their parents. When children were bought off parents, they were promised an education as well as money being sent home. Children were then shipped to the Ivory Coast, where they were held hostage to the workout in the cocoa farm fields. They were forced to work 80 up to 100 hours a week picking cocoa. Hersey’s has not attempted to fix the situation. This children were constantly being abused off and beaten harshly, and were rarely fed, they did not receive an education. Robbin acknowledges many other chocolate suppliers have similar issues, but as soon as reporters were on the case they companies did everything they could to change anything that was incorrect. They immediately attacked the issue and stopped any abusive child labor that was happening, and Children were being compensated for their hard work. Smaller cocoa suppliers have don’t their best to remove all abusive labor practices, while Hersey’s done nothing. Robbin also adds when Hersey’s 153rd birthday the company has released its new and improved policies and practices. They seemed to have simply color coat their misleading issues that were being questioned about. Hersey’s since then have still not done anything about its abusive labor issues. Hersey’s policies and practices of supplying their cocoa have stayed the same they do not fair trade they are not having a third party certification to purchase their source of cocoa they have done nothing to resolve their situation, I believe it is best to purchase chocolate from other suppliers that do not hide the real source of their cocoa. In Ivory Coast in Western Africa child labor seems to be the world’s largest matter. Harsh labor practices have put children to work continuously round the clock. Daily this Western African children are beaten to work out in the farm fields to only make the CEO of Hersey’s weather than the year before. I agree with Robbins “Buying cocoa from farms that employ such abusive labor child labor practices enables Hersey to keep its costs down and its profits up…CEO David J. West, to make $8 million a year while unpaid children are forced to labor under cruel conditions on the farms growing the company’s cocoa.” Hersey’s should not be buying cocoa off farms that do such cruel labor especially with children. If the CEO makes that much money in a year He should provide this low income families with children an education and build schools. I also believe the CEO should fight the right for human rights in Africa he should reduce any abusive child labor and compensate this children for the unpaid labor. The Heresy’s company should not have private organizations to kidnap and abuse of children, and promise them a better living. Purchasing forced labor chocolate can only enable this children to be abused more than before. I support Robbin when he informs us what we can do to make a change. He encourages us to purchase chocolate from forced free labor companies like Clif Bars, Divine Chocolate, and Newman’s Own Organics. There are plenty of other companies that are not produced with forced labor. I also encourage we all do purchase free forced labor chocolate. We are only making the CEO wealthier than ever when purchasing there product. I believe it is important that companies like Hersey’s are being told what is wrong with their disgusting piece of product. I find it disgusting that companies like Hersey’s does such poor labor choices. I have never felt this guilty purchasing chocolate, I am not going to purchase any Hersey products ever. If Hersey’s is choosing to go purchase cocoa from farms that perform abusive labor practices they will eventually lose their consumers. Although, Hersey’s is not the only company that has purchases cocoa from Ivory Coast farms.
Smaller chocolate companies have taken steps to remove, and improve its chain supplies. “…West African cocoa farms is a longstanding and difficult problem for the entire chocolate industry. But while Hersey’s primary competitors have least taken steps to reduce or eliminate slavery and other forms of abusive labor under cruel conditions…” (Robbins 1) Hersey’s should also do its best to eliminate all issues towards abusive labor practices, human trafficking, and its forced labor. Doing so will make hersey’s appear much professional and caring towards its cocoa supply. As Robbin argues if other competitors have purchased cocoa from certified farm fields that are free from forced labors then Hersey’s can also take the same steps to eliminate such …show more content…
discrimination. Overall I agree with John Robbins taking steps to improve its policies and labor practices should be taken into consideration.
Hersey’s should improve its decision when purchasing its cocoa. First of all Hersey’s should publicly announce where there source of cocoa is purchased from and how it’s being cropped. I believe they should also include who is out in fields picking the cocoa and should inform the consumer about its labor practices. Hersey’s should do the right thing and pay them children for their labor. They should also Invest in getting a certified for purchasing there cocoa instead of doing it the cheap way such as forcing children to work, and enslaving them to work 80 to 100 hours per week picking cocoa out in the fields, and stop abusing of their
innocence.
Child labour uncovered in Apple's supply chain. The Guardian. The. The Guardian, 25 Jan 2013. Web.
Throughout this course we learned about slavery and it's effects on our country and on African Americans. Slavery and racism is prevalent throughout the Americas before during and after Thomas Jefferson's presidency. Some people say that Jefferson did not really help stop any of the slavery in the United States. I feel very differently and I will explain why throughout this essay. Throughout this essay I will be explaining how views of race were changed in the United States after the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, and how the events of the Jeffersonian Era set the stage for race relations for the nineteenth century.
Slavery is an American embarrassment but that didn’t prevent it from happening. Anthony Johnson was considered a slave himself, but was determined to become a successful one. In 1621 Johnson was purchased and moved to Northampton, Virginia from Jamestown, Virginia to work on a tobacco plantation to work as what people would debate an indentured servant rather than a slave. Working on these tobacco plantations, as stated in the book, was hell for indentured servants and slaves. On Good Friday in 1622 the plantation that Johnson was working on was attacked by Indians several people were killed, but out of the twelve survivors Johnson was one. He eventually moved to another plantation where he met the love of is life Mary, they tied the knot
The Hershey company purchases their main ingredient, cocoa, from West Africa, mainly from Ivory Coast, where they are notorious for abusive child labor. About 89 percent of the children in the Ivory Coast work to get the cocoa. The Hershey Company has not done much against child slavery because it keeps the cost of cocoa cheap, which allows chocolate to be also low of cost.
They can have the workers make their product for way less than what it is actually worth. Sweatshops also make products much faster than a regular factory. “In a Mexican sweatshop, workers have a quota of 1,000 products a day, but in order to produce this, they’d have to make one item every minute.” (Clothing). Another factor into this is the fact that America doesn’t produce enough laborers to make the products for them. Where it would take America months to find enough employees, it only takes China 15 days (Social, slide 7-8). In 2011, the US department of Labor reported that 130 typed of goods in 71 different countries were produced by forced labor, child labor, or both (Meinert, 24). This means that consumers are subconsciously endorsing forced labor. The consumers then buy the products that are made by forced laborers; however, most consumers do not realize the history of the clothing that they wear
Slavery became an established activity in America by 1600’s. The slaves were mostly to provide free and cheap labor. Apart from America, slavery was practiced in other parts of the world throughout history, and in fact it can be traced back to the time of the ancient civilization. With industrial revolution especially with the rise of sugar plantations, the slaves were used to grow sugar in the periods from 1100.This intensified between 1400 and 1500 when Portugal and Spain ventured into sugar growing in the Eastern Atlantic regions. The growth of the plantations required labor, hence African slaves were bought from Africa, to provide labor.
... say how large the African slave trade would have gotten on its own, without an almost insatiable demand for slaves being created in the West. However, thanks to colonial plantation owners, at its peak it has been estimated that the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was shipping between 18,000 and 32,000 men, women and children from their homeland each year. Considering the recorded slave trade lasted for at least 450 years, that means anywhere between 8.1 and 14.4 million people were torn from their homes and families only to endure inhuman treatment and humiliation. When one looks back at the root causes for exploiting other human beings on such a grotesque extent, it is difficult to justify the wholesale destruction of other people’s homes and cultures for the sake of a particular belief system and a desire for better tasting food.
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slavery was cruelty at its best. Slavery is described as long work days, a lack of respect for a human being, and the inability for a man or a woman to have gainful employment. The slaves were victimized the most for obvious reasons. Next on the list would be the families of both the slave and slave owners. At the bottom of the list would be the slave owners. Slavery does in fact victimize slaves, slave owner and their families by repeating the same cycle every generation.
In the 1800s, a great debate started in America about slavery. Abolitionists wanted to end slavery. They did not agree with what was happening. David Walker said “that we, (coloured people of these United States,) are the most degraded, wretched, and abject set of beings that ever lived since the world began” (David Walker’s Appeal, p. 1) Black people were getting treated like dogs, and it was time to put an end to it. “Slavery…would be frequently…attended with circumstances of great hardship, injustice, and sometimes atrocious cruelty. Still, the consequences and general results were highly beneficial.” (The Political Economy of Slavery, p. 2) And this is where the conflict began. The wealthy needed the slaves for all the manual labor, but
Stopping the use of child labour would help with the company’s reputation. Buying a product with child labour in its production would cause consumers to feel shame, thus there may be a consumer boycott to that particular brand where customers would choose to buy from other cruelty-free chocolate brands or Fair Trade Certified chocolate brands— where farmers’ incomes are raised so they have enough money to hire adult workers and communities would also receive financial aids to invest in education for children — like TCHO instead (Fair Trade USA, 2016). Without child labour in its production, customers would continue buying the company's products in a peace of mind. Furthermore, shareholders would also benefit from the chocolate company’s good reputation as they are able to hold on to their morals and also get large amounts of
Once the introduction to slavery was introduced to America, a firestorm of maltreatment towards human kind ensued. Slaves were an alternative to indentured servants, which proved to be a very popular and cost effective solution to the labor problem amongst farmers. Americans began to import enslaved African workers by the thousands and sold them to land owners as lifelong property. With the indentured population diminished, and due to the low cost of African slaves, popularity and widespread African slavery grew.
Food workers are treated poorly. In, The Jungle, while talking about the food industry, it states, “The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country—from
Instead of playing games with their friends, children in the Ivory Coast of Africa are kidnapped and forced into slavery, spending their childhood harvesting cocoa beans, the main ingredient found in chocolate. That 's right; your chocolate candy bar may have been made with child slave labor. Children in this region are kidnapped and forced to travel miles away from their villages. Most are under the false pretense that they will earn money; poverty is a big problem in this area. Once at the plantation, they are forced to endure an unimaginable amount of pain and suffering, working long hours and locked into shacks at night to prevent their escape. If they are courageous enough to attempt to return home, they are lucky to not be captured and murdered. A boy who escaped this tragedy in Africa was interviewed and had this to say about the consumers in America: “They enjoy something I suffered to make. I worked hard or them, but saw no benefit. They are eating my flesh." Outraged by this information, several California residents have decided to file a lawsuit against three of the top producers of chocolate in the United States: Hershey, Nestle, and Mars. This is not the first time that the chocolate industry has been accused of using child slave labor as a source of economic gain. In 2000, Hershey was investigated for using child slave labor to harvest their cocoa beans; they denied having knowledge of this and vowed to reduce the number of children used in slave labor world wide. In the past 15 years, they have dramatically decreased the number of children that are subjected to this act of violence. According to a report done by the Payson Center for International Development of Tulane University and sponsored by the U....
This means that each party can make choices. However in chocolate manufacturing one of the parties is often a large multi million dollar corporation and the other is a small farming company. Concern about the impact of this on small primary producers in developing countries lead to the Fairtrade agreement which Cadburys is a part of. By signing up to the Fairtrade agreement Cadburys agree to buy cocoa at a certain value. Last year Cadburys sold over 7 million chocolate products made with Fair Trade cocoa and this supported 65,000 jobs in
In recent years, child labor in the chocolate industry has become a serious issue in terms of human rights violations and social justice (Clifford, 2012). According to the article, "Child labor and slavery in the chocolate industry" (2018), cocoa is one of the primary commodities exported in Western African and is an indispensable ingredient used for making chocolate. Over 70% of the cocoa in the world is supplied from Western African countries such as Ghana and the Ivory Coast. With the growth of the chocolate industry, the price of chocolate has become more and more competitive, and chocolate companies are constantly seeking for cheaper cocoa in order to maximize profits.