A couple of days ago, like thousands of other people, I received a Facebook invite, to join the group ” have a Nestle free Easter “. I joined without any hessitation, along with 14,766 other people.

I commend anyone’s actions, who chooses to buy a chocolate bar, displaying the “FAIR TRADE” logo, instead of a bar that does not have this ” it’s o.k to buy this as it has been ethically produced ” product.

BUT:

IS THAT WHAT THE LOGO REALLY REPRESENTS ?

Well, I had thought this to be the case, but after watching a recent Panorama documentary, ” Chocolate, The bitter truth “, I am not convinced. There does not appear to be any real change in Nestle’s, Cadbury’s or others conduct on this issue as we may believe, by the visual image of the fair trade logo on packaging.

Most of the world’s cocoa beans are grown in West Africa, predominantly in Ghana & The Ivory Coast.

Paul Timothy, went to West Africa to reveal how ” the worst forms of child labour ” was still being used in cocoa bean harvesting & had a website ” Paul Timothy Chocolate “, set up, so he could act as a credible dealer to conduct his investigations.

This is very dodgy territory for journalists, as there have been cases of journalists ” going missing ” in the past when reporting ” child trafficking ” in the past.

10 million people in Ghana & The Ivory Coast depend on the growing & harvesting of Cocoa.   Both Governments profit from taxation from the industry. And the chocolate industry relies on both countries as together they produce 60% of the worlds cocoa.

In the very small country of Burkina Faso, which boarders Ghana & The Ivory Coast, the incomes are amongst the lowest in the world. Thousands of kids disappear from Burkina Faso each year.

In Burkina Faso, they understand French, so Paul Timothy was able to speak to some of the children working  in Ghana , who the farmers claimed were from Ghanaian.

If a child is working on a cocoa farm, that is o.k if, they are not trafficked & they also get schooling, but the reality is that a very large number of kids are trafficked & have no schooling, they are not paid & they are often told that their parents are dead!

Most of the children seem to have a very well rehearsed line, if interviewed  they say ” All children go to school & none of them work “.

Unfortunately, a lot of these children are trafficked by other family members, such as uncles, who are paid for the child’s labour at the end of a harvest. Some of the children are as young as 7 years old and are often working from 6am ’til 4pm using machete’s to cut down & split the cocoa husks.

The ILO, ( International Labour Organization ), states that trafficking is illegal & a serious breach of global standards. It also prohibits what it calls ” the worst forms of child labour “. It also prohibits any work ” likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children “, the use of ” hazardous tools “, and prohibits work that interferes with schooling.

A farmer, that was interviewed on Panorama, was suspended ( as well as other farmers ) after  being found to be using child labour, to supply a large fair trade co-operative KUAPA KOKOO, who supplies cocoa for Cadbury’s fair trade chocolate.

Cadbury’s stated , it has not… ” sourced from any of the implicated societies, either prior to or during the suspension “. ” The fact that child labour issues were identified…is the evidence that fair trade certification process is working “.

Fair trade kit kats use cocoa purchased from several co-operatives around the Ivory Coast including the co-operative KAVOKIVA. One farmer who has supplied this co-operative said ” lot’s of farmers use child labour, it is normal. Some go to school, some don’t “.

Paul Timothy went to San Pedro, a major port where the majority of the worlds cocoa is shipped from, to see how easily the traceability of the beans he had acquired, could be sold on, to end up in our high street brands, with the source of the cocoa being untraceable”. This was easily done buy selling the cocoa onto licenced dealers along the roadside who did not need paperwork.

Wall Street Traders, can sell the cocoa, several times over, before it even reaches the Country. Some making $100 a minute & sometimes up to 1/2 a million dollars on a good day.

This would be o.k if the people growing & harvesting the crops for our luxury item had at least the basics that we take for granted, such as, electricity, running water & sanitation. Paul Timothy gave some cocoa workers, adult & children a kit kat to try. They liked it, but they had never even tasted chocolate before & live in very desperate conditions.

Paul Timothy took some of the cocoa back home to make some of his own label chocolate bars & brilliantly put the bars into his own wrappers, displaying on the front & back of the bars,  a logo with a stick drawing of a child with a machete with child labour written on the logo and a tick beside the logo. On the back is written ” Every bar of this chocolate, has been made, at least in part, using the worst forms of child labour.” as defined by ILO ( convention 182 ).

When he showed members of the public, his chocolate bars & pointed out the logo, everyone responded with a shock reaction & they ALL said that they would boycott any chocolate if they KNEW it was made using child labour.

Eliot L Engel ( U.S Congressman ), when he was shown the wrapper said ” it was probably not a bad idea “.

Peter McAllister from the  ( International Cocoa Initiative ), responded with a less than impressed response & a long winded spiel about traceability. But, the International Cocoa Initiative is partly funded by the chocolate industry, so not much surprise there.

Personally, I think the bottom line here is, should we have some kind of tax perhaps on our chocolate treat luxuries ? Would we all be happy to pay a few pence extra to have our chocolate fairly produced ? But how can this be done, in such a way, that we KNOW that it really is FAIR TRADE ???