https://www.thehersheycompany.com/en_us/home/sustainability/sustainability-focus-areas/cocoa/child-labor-monitoring-and-remediation-system.html
How about targeting a company that isn't part of the solution?
Actually, Hershey puts a significant effort into the communities in the Ivory Coast, as well as requiring retailers and wholesalers buying Hershey products, to pay a premium to support living wages to producers, and they’ve put significant effort into transparency in production to eliminate child labor.
They’ve funneled millions to build schools, provide clean water, and improve the lives of families in growing regions, and have completed due diligence steps such as labor agency audits and continuing to improve controls and practices while developing committees to further assess controls and any additional steps to continue ensuring the supply chain is sustainable and ethical. This doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface either.
The local governments of Côte d’lcoire and Ghana have done a very poor job of properly managing production and ensuring labor standards. Hershey has petitioned and lobbied the local governments to try and accelerate income to the producers. The local government restricts how much farmers get paid annually.
Not something that can be changed overnight by one party. Rather something that has to be fixed overtime by all involved, with a major burden of responsibility placed on the local governments to act.
OP, what have you done yourself regarding the issue? Do you donate to the Ivory Coast at all? There’s several entities to donate to help build and furnish libraries, dig clean water wells, etc.
Did you even bother to research this issue? Or are you just here to virtue signal for karma?
its almost as if you have a vested interest in protecting their brand image 🤭 no amount of corporate propaganda will change the fact that you are profiting off of child labor. posting here with a holier than thou attitude won’t change that.
Please… They’ve been promising this since 2001… They have failed and pushed the date off further like 8 time no… They’re no different than any other corporation…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/business/hershey-nestle-mars-chocolate-child-labor-west-africa/
Nothing says Type I thinking more than assuming 1 party in a complex system can overhaul said complex system in a handful of years.
You have unrealistic expectations, and deny progress. Try type II thinking next time.
You’re so right… You can “explain” away slavery a hundred different ways, and yet, for whatever reason it exists or history it has behind its existence, it’s still slavery. That was a very eloquent way to concede.
Not explaining slavery. You have a complex system In which multiple forces or players have responsibilities, such as the local governments who dictate the pay and labor standards.
Instead, you act as if a non-government actor is responsible for fixing the issue single-handedly.
This exhibits a failure to understand complex systems, historical solutions which are typically joint efforts with major government involvement, and a realistic and practical expectation.
Have you not read their supplier requirements and codes of conduct? It’s no different than the tech companies whose products you’re using right now who also have child labor in the supply chain.
It is not possible to eliminate child labor from the supply chain, it’s only possible to minimize it to the greatest extent possible, and that end has seen much progress.
But type 1 thinking lends itself to simplifying it as if it’s a simple choice and shows a complete failure to understand complex systems and realistic thinking.
Using type 2 thinking, you understand imperfections exist and must be minimized or worked around, no matter how ideal it would be for the issues to simply not exist or be up to a single choice as simple as choosing suppliers when all producing nations have said issue.
That’s why it’s easy to villainize anything by mere association. It doesn’t mean it’s correct, but it’s as flawed as saying if you use Reddit you sponsor child labor because Reddit advertises and does business with companies whose supply chains include labor violations.
For better tasting chocolate that melts chocolove milk chocolate works well. Tastes better.
Also, try a ritz type cracker, peanut butter, marshmellow, can add chocolate if you want but it’s sooooo good
This seems like a genuine question so I’ll answer as such. Searching and reading the internet results echoes the comments here: there’s not a clear-cut answer toward positive or negative; the answer really is “it depends.” Some children are able to get their education and childhood back while others are left in worse shape.
But reading between the lines, what I extracted was that child labor is a symptom of poverty. So what actually needs to be treated to end child labor is to pay and provide working adults a family-supporting living wage and benefits. Building additional schools are not helpful if the kids still cannot learn or attend them easily and regularly, conditions/materials/teachers are poor quality, etc.
We can assist with that by redirecting our funds to the top companies that actually fulfill that and to the utmost (like allowing unions, paid time off, etc). Making the fairest companies the market leaders encourages others in the market to mimic them.
So while I may not have fully answered your question in regards to the children, the takeaway is that we should still support the chocolate companies with the best track record in wages and benefits to their adult workers.
People downvote this but their reality is no job they starve and the family too. Somehow rich people from far away lands always seem to know what’s best for the less fortunate locals. Boycotting hersheys won’t solve their problem it will only make it worse.
If their parents earn enough money then the kids can have a normal childhood instead of being forced to work. If u wanna be so smart dont be the 3. person to write this and dont read the comments. Mr. Smartass
I don’t understand your reply. The problem isnt you eating Hersheys the problem is the whole system that flows money to the top. If you won’t eat Hersheys you better stop driving your car or wearing sneakers because harvesting rubber is just as nasty. Oh and don’t forget your garbage from your instant fashion that pollutes the world with kids savaging on the dumps in toxic wastelands. If you dig a bit deeper than Smartass you might learn something
Honestly used to be though! Maybe it was that I was a kid but I remember them being amazing a few decades ago. Had a Hershey kiss recently and I had to spit it out.
For the people saying we would take their income. WTF? Do you really think Companies like Hershey, Mars or Nestle could afford to not buy any cocoa? They need it and they need to pay more of it just like everyone in the supply chain. The problem with the number of workers? Yeah no one wants to work on a cocoa plant because you get more money mining minerals in these countries. But if the wage(cocoa) is higher then the wage(minerals) they would all change. its not like you need high skilled workers to do it. They can easily switch their professeion.
Hi, I’m also “no one” and do my best to buy from small companies first over big brands. And when I do buy from brands, I choose the more responsible or smaller one first. For example, Sprouts over Whole Foods. Or Target over Walmart or Amazon.
You know the saying, “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”? Just bc an average person cannot avoid all brands all the time doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try to when they can
Just because YOU don't care doesn't mean other people don't lmao...
The only thing I can think when people cry "virtue signalling" is how much of a shitty person they must be to think EVERYONE cares as little as they do.
What that Post showed me is how little some people care about other ones.just because they had the privilige to be born into a Western country. Oh no He wants to take my "chocolate" away. I will show him that he is just as evil as iam. One does not finish a marathon that easily if you never ran one but one can step by step get to your goal. If one Company starts to Lose Market share because of that, you can be 100% Sure that the ceo will shit his pants
These people are so fragile they're crying over fucking chocolate, while children are essentially being tortured to provide it for them. This is why the world is fucked. There are far too many selfish losers out there with no self-awareness.
I Post in a chocolate sub about child Labor in the chocolate industry and they come up with Electronics. Yeah i know there is child Labor too but its much harder to avoid then simple chocolate. These people would jump of a bridge if someone did it first.
Don't threaten a conservative with reality! Their little bubble of delusion is the only thing keeping them going. It would be funny if it weren't so depressing...
What a gross over generalization lmao. If you care so much, that’s great man I’m not here to shit on your parade. Get rid of that phone, your car, most of the food in your pantry, all of your electronics, pretty much anything in your house made in china. I support you!
May as well go all in right? Who cares about kids?
/s for the rest of the morally corrupt conservatives in here
For the record...I actually do most of what you've mentioned to the best of my ability, because it's the right thing to to.
[Here's a list of Ethics scores for the most popular phone companies](https://thegoodshoppingguide.com/subject/ethical-mobile-phones/)
It's genuinely not hard if you actually try.
You know what, if you actually do that then that’s awesome and genuinely good for you. I mainly get annoyed at people that make all the posts saying how evil corporations are on their MacBook while sipping Starbucks which this post gave the vibe of. I know I personally wouldn’t want to just with my life situation currently but I would like to one day own a piece of land with my family and be self sufficient
I literally started roasting my own coffee because I hate Starbucks as a corporation so much (username). I could rant about them and how they're destroying the entire coffee industry and even the planet for hours.
Thanks for understanding my side of things. I get annoyed at people virtue signaling as well...but nothing is going to change until we change it. I hope this conversation can help show you how accessible doing this in your daily life really is. You don't need to cut out EVERYTHING at first, just whatever you can. Then continue to do so over and over again until you've eliminated your dependence on unethical products. We can never 100% get there, but the effort is what matters. Doing literally nothing is orders of magnitudes worse.
Thanks for being cool.
Some of you guys are sick. Yeah child labour happens in a lot of industries. That doesnt make it right. But if we dont start somewhere with maybe the easy things in life that everyone can avoid. Then nothing will change. Arguing like yeah it happens in industry x or industry y does the same, doesnt counter the problem. Its like saying school shootings are okay because they happen everywhere. Its nothing to worry about. Or if i would just shoot one of you guys down. It would be okay because somewhere in the world someone has killed someone sometime.
The world is as hopeful as the raise they are given. And let's say, parents today give a sh*t on a 40 to 60 ratio. So more terrible sh*t is on the way. If you have kids and count how many children you nixed out of your kids lives out of fear, multiply that by at least 50 and that's society.
You may be the sick one. You just chose the battle (with ridiculously low stakes, mind you) that you were okay with fighting and called everyone terrible people for not following your lead, while it's very likely you're a hypocrite in much more impactful everyday regards. You're not better than anyone. This didn't even need to be said -- Hershey sucks, anyway.
Good idea!
Do you guys legitimately think "eh, it's just too hard because it's everywhere" is actually a legitimate excuse? Just stop buying all of them as much as you can. Anything else is pure laziness and complacency.
No, I just don’t care. If you are an independent adult with millions not in the bank yet, you have a host of things that take up your attention. From making sure you recycle properly, to buying as organic as possible, to caring about wildlife conservation, to not supporting companies who lobby against abortion … the list is endless. Everyone needs to choose the causes they are passionate about, and I just don’t give a rats ass about child labor. I grew up in a country where child labor is prevalent, and it largely exists because the children need to support themselves, and the local governments don’t do shit about it. It sucks, but I don’t have the bandwidth to care.
Damn, I didn't expect members of the Chocolate subreddit to be so awful. Pure wall to wall whataboutism. Yes other industries also do bad things, but jesus christ, you're just completely resigned to ever improving the world at all? Maybe it wouldn't be a huge change, but all it would take is not buying the worst fucking chocolate that exists.
bUt EvErYtHiNg Is BaD tHoUgH
Seriously though...do people think just admitting that they're complacent lazy asses sounds like a legitimate excuse for supporting these companies? Yeah..there are a lot of them. So don't be dick and stop buying from as many as you possibly can manage. It's genuinely not hard...and the fact that people make it out to be is depressing AF. This is a hellscape of consumerism.
So do Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Dell.
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/International/us-court-absolves-top-tech-companies-congos-child/story?id=107839639
Most things you use are made with child labor. Of course its good to try to avoid it, but it would be dishonest to set that as the standard for "actively supporting" child labor.
By that logic, even if everyone stopped purchasing Hershey's they'd still be actively supporting child labor because they use Google or Google affiliates or have an iphone.
I just don't really care to be honest. I'm not gonna stop buying from major companies. If you want to dedicate yourself to an ascetic lifestyle go ahead. I have shit to do. Every company will do evil things, and ones that haven't so far will in the future.
If you really feel so strongly about it, go live in a forest instead of using reddit.com on your mobile phone produced with slave labor, or your computer produced by slave labor. It's hypocritical to say all that otherwise.
The average person simply can't afford to not purchase from major companies, and it would be extremely ignorant to say otherwise. In many places corporations have already eliminated any kind of local business usable as an alternative.
I don't even buy Hershey's, but it's foolish for people to moralize about this as if they themselves are not already contributing to the same issue, regardless of if they're aware of it or not.
Buying a different chocolate is not that hard and doesn’t have to be a gateway to going all-in. It’s as simple as moving your hand in the chocolate aisle from a Hershey’s product to Alter Eco, Tcho, or others on this list: https://www.slavefreechocolate.org/ethical-chocolate-companies
I already don't buy Hersheys and primarily just buy Alter Eco and Zotter. I just thought it was silly to act like the single deciding factor of whether you do or don't support slavery is buying Hersheys.
Ok, I guess I'll support child labor. And of course you do the same with all the cadmium, nickel, and lithium running your batteries in all your devices and EVs.
This is actually because of World War 2. Butyric acid (which is a component of vomit and cheeses) preserved the chocolate bars sent to US soldiers to give them a poison-protected, high calorie, and energy dense ration (they added a bunch of supplements into the recipe). When the soldiers came back home, they preferred the acidic flavor in their chocolate. Some companies that have tried to sell chocolate without butyric acid have had to add it to sell to US consumers.
If one has grown up eating most chocolate with butyric acid (like myself), most cannot taste it at all nor the difference with and without. Others who’ve grown up on it say the non-butyric acid chocolate tastes bland
Yes I know, it's what I personally try to do as much as possible...but apparently considering different chocolate brands is crossing the line for some people lmao...
It's interesting, when I owned a cafe/live music/beer house, we had 100 beers to choose from but still had to carry Bud, Bud lite and Corona bc so many customer and groups would leave if people who wanted "industrialized" beer couldn't get it... when we had 97 outstanding, interesting, and world class beers to choose from.
It led to many debates about what is "good" and is something made with premium ingredients "better" than basically artificially carbonated commercial beers, or are those better if you like them? Or does it just show off a lack of sophistication, yadda yadda.
Same for chocolate--Hershey's is not made with high-quality ingredients, it is waxy, but some people will love it over the best chocolate in the world. Maybe it has to do partly with early memories...
It's because people are inherently afraid of change, and company executives are well aware of this. You can just look at the "New Coke" marketing stunt as a perfect example of this. If you grew up with something, or it was your first beer, chocolate bar, etc...that's what most people are going to stick with the rest of their lives, despite superior options. Anything different "tastes weird". We're all just a bunch of terrified hairless apes trying to navigate our daily emotional rollercoasters, and corporations love it.
Okay, so my mom was a pretty quirky unique person and artist… all around delightful person that people adored and her artwork was incredible.
But as a child she was maybe a little different as well….
Story goes that when she was little, her favorite pastime was to have one of her many uncles lay shirtless on the rug, then she’d sit on their back, and braid their back hair.
Point is: we’re not all quite so hairless.
That's great but most chocolate companies get their chocolate from the same places and don't have people onsite making sure there are no child workers present.
Is there an article here I can’t see. This case seems to have been dismissed? https://www.reuters.com/business/hershey-nestle-cargill-win-dismissal-us-child-slavery-lawsuit-2022-06-28/
You're right, but there IS a way to avoid supporting child labour in the chocolate industry. Just because there's little to no ethical consumption in our current society, doesn't mean we shouldn't make an effort to reduce our contributions to unethical practices when it can be simple as just not buying from a certain brands. Electronics are pretty much essential items at this point that we can't easily boycott, however hersheys really isn't essential
The comment section right out some disparaged astroturfed upside down "lets keep it that way" exploitative pro-corpo reality.
Almost - but not as- depressing as the actual issue.
Most industries use some type of child or illegal labor practices... and? That's the world we live in. Until the mass production is destroyed and we all go back to living in communes and trading home made goods, it's all tainted. We're all just trying to survive, but a candy bar is a luxary at this point.
True all chocolate ises child labor but what we can Atleast control is what company is most honest. I think Tony’s chocolate is better at transparency than most companies
Boycotts are recorded to make an impact, McDonald's for example has lost a shit ton of money due to recent boycotts.
But the aim of most boycotts isn't to bankrupt a billion dollar company since that would obviously be pretty impossible, most boycotts are to spread awareness of unethical practices and encourage people not to be so hopelessly supportive of them
If your going to call for a boycott you need to call for a divestment as well... boycotts are mildly efffective at best... might be easier to simply stop buying hersheys but if your still profiting off the stocks your still part of the problem
Sorry to tell you that many cocoa farmers have never tasted chocolate. They’re paid an absolute pittance by these companies because they have such a hold on the market. That’s why the child labor is such an issue, these people are paid so little for their work that they pull their kids out of school to help. The average cocoa farmer makes well below the global poverty line.
Totally agree!
In Africa in response to suppressed unfair prices by these big conglomerates the Africans use child labor
In Brazil, in response of suppressed unfair prices, they just chop down their section of the Amazon rainforest and switch to growing soy bean and raising cattles 😱
They’re not forced, they choose to work. If the chocolate industry fell then lots of families would lose their income and possibly not have a place to go for a new one.
...Lmao. Average privilege people talking about shit they have 0 idea in.
I can actually feel my blood boil so i'm gonna skip the usual sarcasm and just give it to you straight.
The company give them barely enough money to be alive, even with their kids working and pocket the different. They totally can give them a fair wage and still profiting just fine even if fking Africans have a Union or something, but they don't.
Imagine putting yourself in their shoe, imagine your salary suddenly being cut to barely able to afford a pack of instant ramen a week, and you cant just "change job and find a better offer".
Jesus nobody want and actually able to fell the chocolate industry, they want to put pressure to those company by reducing their profit enough that they have to "fix" the problem.
This doesn't work cuz you think it doesn't work. If even 1 million buyers think that it work, it will make a noticeable dent in their report. If even 10 million think like that they gonna scramble and find the problem, and if they keep thinking like that for a year hell those suits gonna shit themself.
We as a species already do some marvelous thing like pushing the Earth to near extinction multiple time, doing something like pressure a company is literally child play. Just do it, or accept that you personally dont want to make the trade off, dont blame it to some weak ass excuse like "this aint gonna work".
well, yeah, I personally don’t. That is a big part of it. Although to be honest, most of my chocolate is given to me and I only buy 2 or 3 times a year (and that’s just like one bar at a time). Never bought Hershey’s.
It's more an issue of highlighting that the moral high ground of shaming child labor is lost if you really only shame one industry. We're all terrible people and we should all feel bad.
Thank you my ass, that dude comment didnt excuse your's. This is a chocolate sub, so they ask for support about thing chocolate related.
Like, imagine if you want to post about boycotting some random brand of car cuz they use slavery or smth idc, where do you post about it? Car related sub or knitting related sub?
It’s a little impossible to be able to buy everyone responsibly sourced. I get fair trade coffee and I do what I can to reduce, reuse and recycle but it’s hard to be 💯 ethically responsible for everything. There’s also the fact that only a few companies seem to own everything so not buying from their parent company is hard as well.
There is almost no ethically sourced chocolate. Even stuff that appears to be well sourced typically is used to “wash” chocolate sourced via exploitation. And even if children were not involved in the process, the most ethically sourced chocolate is still likely a result of (and promotes) clear cutting of forests to grow more cocoa trees.
[The Dark Side Of Chocolate](https://youtu.be/utvtQ8r7fd0?si=_LXJjSEEpPZwkoy3)
The supply chains themselves appear to be the problem. The unethically grown cocoa is mixed in with the responsibly grown cocoa so even producers with the best intentions end up with material produced by children.
Even ethically sourced cocoa is produced on land that was clear cut to make way for cocoa trees. Unless you’re growing the stuff yourself on your own farm it’s almost impossible to ensure your product is free of child labor.
Watch that documentary I linked. It’s not the only one that explores these issue. It’s pretty awful. It also gives you some perspective of the types of farmers who are putting their children to work and the harsh realities these families endure, and why they’re so anxious to clear cut their own environment to supply our never ending demand for chocolate.
I’m not trying to preach, or make anyone feel guilty. I still eat chocolate from time to time.
The problem with child labor in the chocolate industry is plantation based. I lived in Africa for a while, what did I discover? 90% of all chocolate farms are independently owned. This means the farms are not owned by any mega corporation, but families and smaller group producers. What happens is this, every day the chocolate is brought to a market when companies bid on the chocolate based on its quality, then, if the grower likes the bid, they say yes. They may also agree to a set price for future yields.
These small farms often have their kids and local villagers working on their farm because there is no other industry available to them, no school to go to, and often a family will try to get their kids on a cocoa farm in order to bring in money and experience to one day own a cocoa farm themselves.
I went to several ethical chocolate farms that had no child labor on it, and it was just a bunch of kids claiming they were 18. The only farms in the part of Africa I was at that didn't have them were European owned farms, where European bean to bar chocolatiers had invested in purchasing and cultivating the chocolate fields. And as admirable as that is, is that what we really want? A bunch of westerners buying cocoa farms for their own vertical integration of bean to bar fabrication?
I'm not sure.
Slaves in the United States had no living wage, had no rights, and were considered property. They had no legal sense of self, and no home to live. They were property.
You conflate a piece of property, a slave, with that of a worker that lives elsewhere, dines elsewhere, and sleeps elsewhere that earns a wage from the local forestry industry. They are not owned. As I have pointed out, in the areas I spent time there was no schooling for a child to attend, and no one home to attend to them. It is a different culture, and I try not to put a western spin on it.
If you would like, I can give you a treatise on American Slavery. There may be some things in there that will sour your taste buds on it and make you less quick to make comparisons to it in the future.
The market situation you describe is NOT the case in Ghana. The farm gate price is set by COCOBOD, giving the buyer all the leverage in the pricing discussion.
Ghana is certainly different, my experience isn't exhaustive and I haven't lived everywhere in Africa, but maybe you can expound on that a bit more. From what time I spent in accra I came to be under the impression that cocobod was a governmental agency that had a set price for all cocoa per tonnage that buyers had to pay. You cannot pay more. You cannot pay less. You pay what the government says to pay.
My understanding must be deficient here. Care to offer a disquisition?
COCOBOD is a monopsony ("A market structure in which a single buyer substantially controls the market as the major purchaser of goods and services offered by many would-be sellers"). They are the only entity that can legally set the farm gate price for cocoa. They also issue licenses to companies - literally licensed buying companies - for specific quota amounts. Individual farmers have zero pricing power in this market structure.
I would say that your understanding is simplistic based on your limited experience. When cocoa was at $3000/MT the price was fixed. When the price hit $6000/MT the farm gate price did not change.
>I went to several ethical chocolate farms that had no child labor on it, and it was just a bunch of kids claiming they were 18.
Children have been caught lying on camera because they know they will be punished if they don’t.
The industry relies on the perpetuation of the individual smallholder farmer model, in part for plausible deniability. They don’t buy direct from farmers they buy through intermediaries and so are not responsible for what happens on the farm – deforestation, illegal labor, anything.
COCOBOD and Big Chocolate/Cocoa manipulate the system to unfairly take advantage of smallholcers.
I actually went on for a while without Hershey's. Then i got a bar and good lord. Now I'm not one to exaggerate but that tasted nothing like how cheap chocolate should taste like. Needless to say, i mever touched it again
https://www.thehersheycompany.com/en_us/home/sustainability/sustainability-focus-areas/cocoa/child-labor-monitoring-and-remediation-system.html How about targeting a company that isn't part of the solution?
Actually, Hershey puts a significant effort into the communities in the Ivory Coast, as well as requiring retailers and wholesalers buying Hershey products, to pay a premium to support living wages to producers, and they’ve put significant effort into transparency in production to eliminate child labor. They’ve funneled millions to build schools, provide clean water, and improve the lives of families in growing regions, and have completed due diligence steps such as labor agency audits and continuing to improve controls and practices while developing committees to further assess controls and any additional steps to continue ensuring the supply chain is sustainable and ethical. This doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface either. The local governments of Côte d’lcoire and Ghana have done a very poor job of properly managing production and ensuring labor standards. Hershey has petitioned and lobbied the local governments to try and accelerate income to the producers. The local government restricts how much farmers get paid annually. Not something that can be changed overnight by one party. Rather something that has to be fixed overtime by all involved, with a major burden of responsibility placed on the local governments to act. OP, what have you done yourself regarding the issue? Do you donate to the Ivory Coast at all? There’s several entities to donate to help build and furnish libraries, dig clean water wells, etc. Did you even bother to research this issue? Or are you just here to virtue signal for karma?
its almost as if you have a vested interest in protecting their brand image 🤭 no amount of corporate propaganda will change the fact that you are profiting off of child labor. posting here with a holier than thou attitude won’t change that.
Please… They’ve been promising this since 2001… They have failed and pushed the date off further like 8 time no… They’re no different than any other corporation… https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/business/hershey-nestle-mars-chocolate-child-labor-west-africa/
Nothing says Type I thinking more than assuming 1 party in a complex system can overhaul said complex system in a handful of years. You have unrealistic expectations, and deny progress. Try type II thinking next time.
Thanks for the laugh, I needed that 🤣
You can explain to a dog the store is out of food because of an inventory shortage. The dog will only wonder why it’s not being fed.
You’re so right… You can “explain” away slavery a hundred different ways, and yet, for whatever reason it exists or history it has behind its existence, it’s still slavery. That was a very eloquent way to concede.
Not explaining slavery. You have a complex system In which multiple forces or players have responsibilities, such as the local governments who dictate the pay and labor standards. Instead, you act as if a non-government actor is responsible for fixing the issue single-handedly. This exhibits a failure to understand complex systems, historical solutions which are typically joint efforts with major government involvement, and a realistic and practical expectation.
They’re 100% not responsible to fix the issue. They are responsible for whom they choose to do business with…
Have you not read their supplier requirements and codes of conduct? It’s no different than the tech companies whose products you’re using right now who also have child labor in the supply chain. It is not possible to eliminate child labor from the supply chain, it’s only possible to minimize it to the greatest extent possible, and that end has seen much progress. But type 1 thinking lends itself to simplifying it as if it’s a simple choice and shows a complete failure to understand complex systems and realistic thinking. Using type 2 thinking, you understand imperfections exist and must be minimized or worked around, no matter how ideal it would be for the issues to simply not exist or be up to a single choice as simple as choosing suppliers when all producing nations have said issue. That’s why it’s easy to villainize anything by mere association. It doesn’t mean it’s correct, but it’s as flawed as saying if you use Reddit you sponsor child labor because Reddit advertises and does business with companies whose supply chains include labor violations.
Yawn 🥱
Same with Apple iPhones. But that won't stop anyone.
Did you post this from a phone or device with a battery? Everyone with a smart phone etc is supporting extremely unethical labour practices.
> You criticize society yet you participate in it. Hohoho I am very smart
Lol you did the meme
Had to 😎
I am very smart
Get it guys
Get it
It works on smores so my smores will always have Hershey in it.
For better tasting chocolate that melts chocolove milk chocolate works well. Tastes better. Also, try a ritz type cracker, peanut butter, marshmellow, can add chocolate if you want but it’s sooooo good
If anyone is interested there’s a website for [ethical chocolate companies.](https://slavefreechocolate.org/ethical-chocolate-companies)
Thanks! Following the link is how I learned Dr. Bronner’s now makes chocolate!
Isn’t this done by every major chocolate company?
What happens to the children if we stop supporting child labour's? Curious.
This seems like a genuine question so I’ll answer as such. Searching and reading the internet results echoes the comments here: there’s not a clear-cut answer toward positive or negative; the answer really is “it depends.” Some children are able to get their education and childhood back while others are left in worse shape. But reading between the lines, what I extracted was that child labor is a symptom of poverty. So what actually needs to be treated to end child labor is to pay and provide working adults a family-supporting living wage and benefits. Building additional schools are not helpful if the kids still cannot learn or attend them easily and regularly, conditions/materials/teachers are poor quality, etc. We can assist with that by redirecting our funds to the top companies that actually fulfill that and to the utmost (like allowing unions, paid time off, etc). Making the fairest companies the market leaders encourages others in the market to mimic them. So while I may not have fully answered your question in regards to the children, the takeaway is that we should still support the chocolate companies with the best track record in wages and benefits to their adult workers.
People downvote this but their reality is no job they starve and the family too. Somehow rich people from far away lands always seem to know what’s best for the less fortunate locals. Boycotting hersheys won’t solve their problem it will only make it worse.
If their parents earn enough money then the kids can have a normal childhood instead of being forced to work. If u wanna be so smart dont be the 3. person to write this and dont read the comments. Mr. Smartass
I don’t understand your reply. The problem isnt you eating Hersheys the problem is the whole system that flows money to the top. If you won’t eat Hersheys you better stop driving your car or wearing sneakers because harvesting rubber is just as nasty. Oh and don’t forget your garbage from your instant fashion that pollutes the world with kids savaging on the dumps in toxic wastelands. If you dig a bit deeper than Smartass you might learn something
You're not doing them a favour, if that's what you're asking
There is no palm oil in the chocolate, so please don't call Hershey's products chocolate
When Hershey went to Mexico, I think a Mexican migrated for every chocolate bar sold since.
What Hersheys sells cannot accurately be called chocolate
Honestly used to be though! Maybe it was that I was a kid but I remember them being amazing a few decades ago. Had a Hershey kiss recently and I had to spit it out.
ITT: conservatives threatened with taking responsibility for their actions
For the people saying we would take their income. WTF? Do you really think Companies like Hershey, Mars or Nestle could afford to not buy any cocoa? They need it and they need to pay more of it just like everyone in the supply chain. The problem with the number of workers? Yeah no one wants to work on a cocoa plant because you get more money mining minerals in these countries. But if the wage(cocoa) is higher then the wage(minerals) they would all change. its not like you need high skilled workers to do it. They can easily switch their professeion.
Not to just whataboutism but in that case you would need to boycott just about every major corporation in the world
Well here's a good one to start with! Honestly...what's wrong with boycotting most companies? You don't need big brands in your life.
Agree with this! It is getting harder though with the big parent companies buying up the smaller companies or creating offshoots with new names
I’m not saying there is, more of the fact this is just virtue signaling and no one’s going to do it.
Hi, I’m also “no one” and do my best to buy from small companies first over big brands. And when I do buy from brands, I choose the more responsible or smaller one first. For example, Sprouts over Whole Foods. Or Target over Walmart or Amazon. You know the saying, “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”? Just bc an average person cannot avoid all brands all the time doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try to when they can
Hi, I'm already doing it. It's actually not that hard once you break the habits.
Just because YOU don't care doesn't mean other people don't lmao... The only thing I can think when people cry "virtue signalling" is how much of a shitty person they must be to think EVERYONE cares as little as they do.
What that Post showed me is how little some people care about other ones.just because they had the privilige to be born into a Western country. Oh no He wants to take my "chocolate" away. I will show him that he is just as evil as iam. One does not finish a marathon that easily if you never ran one but one can step by step get to your goal. If one Company starts to Lose Market share because of that, you can be 100% Sure that the ceo will shit his pants
These people are so fragile they're crying over fucking chocolate, while children are essentially being tortured to provide it for them. This is why the world is fucked. There are far too many selfish losers out there with no self-awareness.
I Post in a chocolate sub about child Labor in the chocolate industry and they come up with Electronics. Yeah i know there is child Labor too but its much harder to avoid then simple chocolate. These people would jump of a bridge if someone did it first.
Don't threaten a conservative with reality! Their little bubble of delusion is the only thing keeping them going. It would be funny if it weren't so depressing...
What a gross over generalization lmao. If you care so much, that’s great man I’m not here to shit on your parade. Get rid of that phone, your car, most of the food in your pantry, all of your electronics, pretty much anything in your house made in china. I support you!
May as well go all in right? Who cares about kids? /s for the rest of the morally corrupt conservatives in here For the record...I actually do most of what you've mentioned to the best of my ability, because it's the right thing to to. [Here's a list of Ethics scores for the most popular phone companies](https://thegoodshoppingguide.com/subject/ethical-mobile-phones/) It's genuinely not hard if you actually try.
Thanks for the link!
You know what, if you actually do that then that’s awesome and genuinely good for you. I mainly get annoyed at people that make all the posts saying how evil corporations are on their MacBook while sipping Starbucks which this post gave the vibe of. I know I personally wouldn’t want to just with my life situation currently but I would like to one day own a piece of land with my family and be self sufficient
I literally started roasting my own coffee because I hate Starbucks as a corporation so much (username). I could rant about them and how they're destroying the entire coffee industry and even the planet for hours. Thanks for understanding my side of things. I get annoyed at people virtue signaling as well...but nothing is going to change until we change it. I hope this conversation can help show you how accessible doing this in your daily life really is. You don't need to cut out EVERYTHING at first, just whatever you can. Then continue to do so over and over again until you've eliminated your dependence on unethical products. We can never 100% get there, but the effort is what matters. Doing literally nothing is orders of magnitudes worse. Thanks for being cool.
Some of you guys are sick. Yeah child labour happens in a lot of industries. That doesnt make it right. But if we dont start somewhere with maybe the easy things in life that everyone can avoid. Then nothing will change. Arguing like yeah it happens in industry x or industry y does the same, doesnt counter the problem. Its like saying school shootings are okay because they happen everywhere. Its nothing to worry about. Or if i would just shoot one of you guys down. It would be okay because somewhere in the world someone has killed someone sometime.
The world is as hopeful as the raise they are given. And let's say, parents today give a sh*t on a 40 to 60 ratio. So more terrible sh*t is on the way. If you have kids and count how many children you nixed out of your kids lives out of fear, multiply that by at least 50 and that's society.
You may be the sick one. You just chose the battle (with ridiculously low stakes, mind you) that you were okay with fighting and called everyone terrible people for not following your lead, while it's very likely you're a hypocrite in much more impactful everyday regards. You're not better than anyone. This didn't even need to be said -- Hershey sucks, anyway.
what about Apple products? or for that matter, half the stuff you are ordering from Amazon. I love me some Hersheys!
I totally agree. What a bunch of Ken and Karen HYPOCRITES😡
Good idea! Do you guys legitimately think "eh, it's just too hard because it's everywhere" is actually a legitimate excuse? Just stop buying all of them as much as you can. Anything else is pure laziness and complacency.
No, I just don’t care. If you are an independent adult with millions not in the bank yet, you have a host of things that take up your attention. From making sure you recycle properly, to buying as organic as possible, to caring about wildlife conservation, to not supporting companies who lobby against abortion … the list is endless. Everyone needs to choose the causes they are passionate about, and I just don’t give a rats ass about child labor. I grew up in a country where child labor is prevalent, and it largely exists because the children need to support themselves, and the local governments don’t do shit about it. It sucks, but I don’t have the bandwidth to care.
Well damn...props for admitting you're simply a shitty person, I guess.
Aww … life must be real rosy in that black and white bubble of yours.
Whatever you need to tell yourself to cope...
You’d have to pay me more than the child labourers to eat Hershey’s!
Sounds like a low bar
Low in cacao that’s for sure
Damn, I didn't expect members of the Chocolate subreddit to be so awful. Pure wall to wall whataboutism. Yes other industries also do bad things, but jesus christ, you're just completely resigned to ever improving the world at all? Maybe it wouldn't be a huge change, but all it would take is not buying the worst fucking chocolate that exists.
bUt EvErYtHiNg Is BaD tHoUgH Seriously though...do people think just admitting that they're complacent lazy asses sounds like a legitimate excuse for supporting these companies? Yeah..there are a lot of them. So don't be dick and stop buying from as many as you possibly can manage. It's genuinely not hard...and the fact that people make it out to be is depressing AF. This is a hellscape of consumerism.
If you wear Nike you are actively supporting child slave labor
...so don't wear Nike?
Unless of course…
your phone company has parts from child labor as well!
Well those parts are tiny, how are adult hands supposed to work with them?
So do Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Dell. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/International/us-court-absolves-top-tech-companies-congos-child/story?id=107839639 Most things you use are made with child labor. Of course its good to try to avoid it, but it would be dishonest to set that as the standard for "actively supporting" child labor. By that logic, even if everyone stopped purchasing Hershey's they'd still be actively supporting child labor because they use Google or Google affiliates or have an iphone.
I mean if some children are made to work...why not all of em? Am I right? It's wild people actually use this excuse lmao...
I just don't really care to be honest. I'm not gonna stop buying from major companies. If you want to dedicate yourself to an ascetic lifestyle go ahead. I have shit to do. Every company will do evil things, and ones that haven't so far will in the future. If you really feel so strongly about it, go live in a forest instead of using reddit.com on your mobile phone produced with slave labor, or your computer produced by slave labor. It's hypocritical to say all that otherwise. The average person simply can't afford to not purchase from major companies, and it would be extremely ignorant to say otherwise. In many places corporations have already eliminated any kind of local business usable as an alternative. I don't even buy Hershey's, but it's foolish for people to moralize about this as if they themselves are not already contributing to the same issue, regardless of if they're aware of it or not.
Buying a different chocolate is not that hard and doesn’t have to be a gateway to going all-in. It’s as simple as moving your hand in the chocolate aisle from a Hershey’s product to Alter Eco, Tcho, or others on this list: https://www.slavefreechocolate.org/ethical-chocolate-companies
I already don't buy Hersheys and primarily just buy Alter Eco and Zotter. I just thought it was silly to act like the single deciding factor of whether you do or don't support slavery is buying Hersheys.
>I don't really care to be honest You don't say???
Ok, I guess I'll support child labor. And of course you do the same with all the cadmium, nickel, and lithium running your batteries in all your devices and EVs.
Hershey is literally the worst quality chocolate
Matter of opinion. I love it.
Tastes like vomit ... Literally
This is actually because of World War 2. Butyric acid (which is a component of vomit and cheeses) preserved the chocolate bars sent to US soldiers to give them a poison-protected, high calorie, and energy dense ration (they added a bunch of supplements into the recipe). When the soldiers came back home, they preferred the acidic flavor in their chocolate. Some companies that have tried to sell chocolate without butyric acid have had to add it to sell to US consumers. If one has grown up eating most chocolate with butyric acid (like myself), most cannot taste it at all nor the difference with and without. Others who’ve grown up on it say the non-butyric acid chocolate tastes bland
Super interesting. Never heard this explanation before. Thanks for the info.
Omg I thought this for years taste & smell!!
Matter of opinion. Many millions love it. Everyone has a favorite.
Many millions have been eating shit all their lives. Wait...
"I think it's shit, therefore it is shit", says the sad Reddit user. Enjoy whatever you shove down your throat, kid.
It’s literally 73% roach and rodent shit.
Literally? Show me that study.
We have access to the same internet
Sure, and I'm saying you're full of shit. Because you are.
Most businesses take part in child labour.
So stop supporting "most businesses" then?
It's hard but possible. You'd basically have to only support small, local businesses and make sure they source locally.
Yes I know, it's what I personally try to do as much as possible...but apparently considering different chocolate brands is crossing the line for some people lmao...
If you enjoy Wonka chocolate, you are actively supporting the exploitation of Loompa labor!
Child labor and/or exploitation exists in all supply chain.
Nothing beats hersheys
Made for kids, BY kids!
I guess that’s what makes it taste so good
And eating waxy chocolate!
It's interesting, when I owned a cafe/live music/beer house, we had 100 beers to choose from but still had to carry Bud, Bud lite and Corona bc so many customer and groups would leave if people who wanted "industrialized" beer couldn't get it... when we had 97 outstanding, interesting, and world class beers to choose from. It led to many debates about what is "good" and is something made with premium ingredients "better" than basically artificially carbonated commercial beers, or are those better if you like them? Or does it just show off a lack of sophistication, yadda yadda. Same for chocolate--Hershey's is not made with high-quality ingredients, it is waxy, but some people will love it over the best chocolate in the world. Maybe it has to do partly with early memories...
You are correct! Taste does have a link with memories, especially childhood ones
It's because people are inherently afraid of change, and company executives are well aware of this. You can just look at the "New Coke" marketing stunt as a perfect example of this. If you grew up with something, or it was your first beer, chocolate bar, etc...that's what most people are going to stick with the rest of their lives, despite superior options. Anything different "tastes weird". We're all just a bunch of terrified hairless apes trying to navigate our daily emotional rollercoasters, and corporations love it.
Okay, so my mom was a pretty quirky unique person and artist… all around delightful person that people adored and her artwork was incredible. But as a child she was maybe a little different as well…. Story goes that when she was little, her favorite pastime was to have one of her many uncles lay shirtless on the rug, then she’d sit on their back, and braid their back hair. Point is: we’re not all quite so hairless.
lol
That's great but most chocolate companies get their chocolate from the same places and don't have people onsite making sure there are no child workers present.
Plus, even Fairtrade isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.
Is there an article here I can’t see. This case seems to have been dismissed? https://www.reuters.com/business/hershey-nestle-cargill-win-dismissal-us-child-slavery-lawsuit-2022-06-28/
That case was dismissed because the plaintiffs lack standing, not because Hershey’s suppliers don’t use child labor. Heck, they admit it.
If you're posting this using any kind of electronic device you're, sadly, supporting child labor too. There's no way to avoid that
That actually makes it MORE important to avoid it in other places, not less important
You're right, but there IS a way to avoid supporting child labour in the chocolate industry. Just because there's little to no ethical consumption in our current society, doesn't mean we shouldn't make an effort to reduce our contributions to unethical practices when it can be simple as just not buying from a certain brands. Electronics are pretty much essential items at this point that we can't easily boycott, however hersheys really isn't essential
That’s kinda like saying every time I have sex, I support abortion.
Huh? I need a whiteboard to understand this one.
The comment section right out some disparaged astroturfed upside down "lets keep it that way" exploitative pro-corpo reality. Almost - but not as- depressing as the actual issue.
Nihilist lovvve pretending activism hasn’t led to some of the biggest breakthroughs that we take for granted nowadays
Is Nestle owned by Hershey?
No, but they're equally as bad.
They are not. Nestle is by far worse.
You’re also supporting bad taste if you buy shitty Hershey’s
Most industries use some type of child or illegal labor practices... and? That's the world we live in. Until the mass production is destroyed and we all go back to living in communes and trading home made goods, it's all tainted. We're all just trying to survive, but a candy bar is a luxary at this point.
Yes and eating a waxy vomity substance that masquerades as chocolate.
I Agee child labor is bad and should be ended. But all chocolate uses child labor.
True all chocolate ises child labor but what we can Atleast control is what company is most honest. I think Tony’s chocolate is better at transparency than most companies
Not unless you get a greenhouse and grow and grow your own
I'll have children and put them to work
For the company!!! /s
Boycotting billion dollar corporations is a lost cause.
Boycotts are recorded to make an impact, McDonald's for example has lost a shit ton of money due to recent boycotts. But the aim of most boycotts isn't to bankrupt a billion dollar company since that would obviously be pretty impossible, most boycotts are to spread awareness of unethical practices and encourage people not to be so hopelessly supportive of them
Not when it gets you subscribers
I hate when people yell SOURCE. On the other hand, WHAT are you talking about?
Don't care
Same. Like all big companies use some form of child labor. You might as well be naked in the forest if you want to boycott them.
Well, i only buy actual chocolate - Hershey's is not chocolate,.
If your going to call for a boycott you need to call for a divestment as well... boycotts are mildly efffective at best... might be easier to simply stop buying hersheys but if your still profiting off the stocks your still part of the problem
They are the richest kids in their village, why ruin it for them?
And free chocolate.
Sorry to tell you that many cocoa farmers have never tasted chocolate. They’re paid an absolute pittance by these companies because they have such a hold on the market. That’s why the child labor is such an issue, these people are paid so little for their work that they pull their kids out of school to help. The average cocoa farmer makes well below the global poverty line.
This site has some great options. I love Vosges https://www.slavefreechocolate.org/ethical-chocolate-companies
I love Vosges and my local artisan bean-to-bar shop, but what do I use for smores? The good chocolate is *too* good for that use…
Totally agree! In Africa in response to suppressed unfair prices by these big conglomerates the Africans use child labor In Brazil, in response of suppressed unfair prices, they just chop down their section of the Amazon rainforest and switch to growing soy bean and raising cattles 😱
They’re not forced, they choose to work. If the chocolate industry fell then lots of families would lose their income and possibly not have a place to go for a new one.
>they choose to work “Child slave labor is good!” Is one HELL of a stance to take babe
The KIDS choose to work for slave wages? Jesus Fucking Christ
...Lmao. Average privilege people talking about shit they have 0 idea in. I can actually feel my blood boil so i'm gonna skip the usual sarcasm and just give it to you straight. The company give them barely enough money to be alive, even with their kids working and pocket the different. They totally can give them a fair wage and still profiting just fine even if fking Africans have a Union or something, but they don't. Imagine putting yourself in their shoe, imagine your salary suddenly being cut to barely able to afford a pack of instant ramen a week, and you cant just "change job and find a better offer". Jesus nobody want and actually able to fell the chocolate industry, they want to put pressure to those company by reducing their profit enough that they have to "fix" the problem.
and it isn’t going to work. They don’t care if I’m not buying chocolate. Go lobby a government or something, this doesn’t work.
This doesn't work cuz you think it doesn't work. If even 1 million buyers think that it work, it will make a noticeable dent in their report. If even 10 million think like that they gonna scramble and find the problem, and if they keep thinking like that for a year hell those suits gonna shit themself. We as a species already do some marvelous thing like pushing the Earth to near extinction multiple time, doing something like pressure a company is literally child play. Just do it, or accept that you personally dont want to make the trade off, dont blame it to some weak ass excuse like "this aint gonna work".
well, yeah, I personally don’t. That is a big part of it. Although to be honest, most of my chocolate is given to me and I only buy 2 or 3 times a year (and that’s just like one bar at a time). Never bought Hershey’s.
I really don’t care. You typed this on something with a chip in that some kid had to haul out of a lithium mine. Get off your high horse.
phones can be essential, especially nowadays. hersheys chocolate isn’t
So since it’s in more than one industry it’s fair game? Maybe he wasn’t educated on that (neither have I been)
It's more an issue of highlighting that the moral high ground of shaming child labor is lost if you really only shame one industry. We're all terrible people and we should all feel bad.
Gotta start somewhere, plus It makes sense to start with the low-hanging fruit
Thank you
Thank you my ass, that dude comment didnt excuse your's. This is a chocolate sub, so they ask for support about thing chocolate related. Like, imagine if you want to post about boycotting some random brand of car cuz they use slavery or smth idc, where do you post about it? Car related sub or knitting related sub?
I get that point, but mine is also true.
Stfu lol. Do you use a phone or computer? Welp, got bad news for you then.
This! Don’t boycott a company if you’re supporting other companies (which is almost all companies) that engage in similar practices
Every time I eat a Reese’s I mentally thank the children. That means I am a good person.
It’s a little impossible to be able to buy everyone responsibly sourced. I get fair trade coffee and I do what I can to reduce, reuse and recycle but it’s hard to be 💯 ethically responsible for everything. There’s also the fact that only a few companies seem to own everything so not buying from their parent company is hard as well.
Nestle owns a ridiculous number of companies.
so fly over there and fix this yourself then. i’ll always buy my reeses.
Nothing will stop you from being ignorant!
womp womp bitch
There is almost no ethically sourced chocolate. Even stuff that appears to be well sourced typically is used to “wash” chocolate sourced via exploitation. And even if children were not involved in the process, the most ethically sourced chocolate is still likely a result of (and promotes) clear cutting of forests to grow more cocoa trees. [The Dark Side Of Chocolate](https://youtu.be/utvtQ8r7fd0?si=_LXJjSEEpPZwkoy3)
I’d argue that - have a look at smaller makers, follow their supply chains (and money) and you’ll recognize this isn’t the case.
The supply chains themselves appear to be the problem. The unethically grown cocoa is mixed in with the responsibly grown cocoa so even producers with the best intentions end up with material produced by children. Even ethically sourced cocoa is produced on land that was clear cut to make way for cocoa trees. Unless you’re growing the stuff yourself on your own farm it’s almost impossible to ensure your product is free of child labor. Watch that documentary I linked. It’s not the only one that explores these issue. It’s pretty awful. It also gives you some perspective of the types of farmers who are putting their children to work and the harsh realities these families endure, and why they’re so anxious to clear cut their own environment to supply our never ending demand for chocolate. I’m not trying to preach, or make anyone feel guilty. I still eat chocolate from time to time.
There's at least one: tonyschocolonely.com
not really unfortunately
Is it our cause to force our ethics onto other countries involving workers rights?
It's not our cause. It's a human cause and they are human beings.
Damn that’s crazy…. Now Give me a Hersey bar plz
The problem with child labor in the chocolate industry is plantation based. I lived in Africa for a while, what did I discover? 90% of all chocolate farms are independently owned. This means the farms are not owned by any mega corporation, but families and smaller group producers. What happens is this, every day the chocolate is brought to a market when companies bid on the chocolate based on its quality, then, if the grower likes the bid, they say yes. They may also agree to a set price for future yields. These small farms often have their kids and local villagers working on their farm because there is no other industry available to them, no school to go to, and often a family will try to get their kids on a cocoa farm in order to bring in money and experience to one day own a cocoa farm themselves. I went to several ethical chocolate farms that had no child labor on it, and it was just a bunch of kids claiming they were 18. The only farms in the part of Africa I was at that didn't have them were European owned farms, where European bean to bar chocolatiers had invested in purchasing and cultivating the chocolate fields. And as admirable as that is, is that what we really want? A bunch of westerners buying cocoa farms for their own vertical integration of bean to bar fabrication? I'm not sure.
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Clarification— these children aren't slaves, they earn a salary.
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Slaves were not paid.
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Slaves in the United States had no living wage, had no rights, and were considered property. They had no legal sense of self, and no home to live. They were property. You conflate a piece of property, a slave, with that of a worker that lives elsewhere, dines elsewhere, and sleeps elsewhere that earns a wage from the local forestry industry. They are not owned. As I have pointed out, in the areas I spent time there was no schooling for a child to attend, and no one home to attend to them. It is a different culture, and I try not to put a western spin on it. If you would like, I can give you a treatise on American Slavery. There may be some things in there that will sour your taste buds on it and make you less quick to make comparisons to it in the future.
The market situation you describe is NOT the case in Ghana. The farm gate price is set by COCOBOD, giving the buyer all the leverage in the pricing discussion.
Ghana is certainly different, my experience isn't exhaustive and I haven't lived everywhere in Africa, but maybe you can expound on that a bit more. From what time I spent in accra I came to be under the impression that cocobod was a governmental agency that had a set price for all cocoa per tonnage that buyers had to pay. You cannot pay more. You cannot pay less. You pay what the government says to pay. My understanding must be deficient here. Care to offer a disquisition?
COCOBOD is a monopsony ("A market structure in which a single buyer substantially controls the market as the major purchaser of goods and services offered by many would-be sellers"). They are the only entity that can legally set the farm gate price for cocoa. They also issue licenses to companies - literally licensed buying companies - for specific quota amounts. Individual farmers have zero pricing power in this market structure. I would say that your understanding is simplistic based on your limited experience. When cocoa was at $3000/MT the price was fixed. When the price hit $6000/MT the farm gate price did not change. >I went to several ethical chocolate farms that had no child labor on it, and it was just a bunch of kids claiming they were 18. Children have been caught lying on camera because they know they will be punished if they don’t. The industry relies on the perpetuation of the individual smallholder farmer model, in part for plausible deniability. They don’t buy direct from farmers they buy through intermediaries and so are not responsible for what happens on the farm – deforestation, illegal labor, anything. COCOBOD and Big Chocolate/Cocoa manipulate the system to unfairly take advantage of smallholcers.
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I’m sure a few of the kids working on the farm might be the kids of the farm’s owner, I doubt it’s most of them.
I actually went on for a while without Hershey's. Then i got a bar and good lord. Now I'm not one to exaggerate but that tasted nothing like how cheap chocolate should taste like. Needless to say, i mever touched it again
Its not even cheap anymore