Take Action: Tell Hershey, Mars & Nestle to Stop Child Labor!

by Zarah Patriana

Published February 12, 2009 @ 10:39AM PT

It's the season of chocolate and flowers with Valentine's Day just around the corner and the Fair Trade blog has been doing it's part to shed some light on the injustices that continue to go on in both industries and offering ethical alternatives.

The chocolate industry has been making lofty promises to fair up their practices, particularly around ending child labor in the industry. However several years after the Harkin-Engel protocol, in which the chocolate industry said they would put an end to child labor the major chocolate companies have failed to live up to the promise. What we need now is to continue to demand for justice to stop child labor and to ensure transparency in their supply chains.

ILRF's Tim Newman just started an action to tell Hershey, Mars & Nestle to Stop Child Labor. They have started a petition sending a strong message to the major chocolate companie that their consumers want change.

Since 2001, chocolate consumers around the world have voiced their concern about child labor and trafficking on cocoa farms in West Africa.  Despite millions of dollars and tons of public relations campaigns over the years, the worst forms of child labor and trafficking continue to occur in the cocoa supply chains of major US chocolate companies like Hershey, M&M/Mars and Nestle.  We've heard the same talking points from these companies for years about how they are working together as an industry to stop child labor, but their lack of progress to date is unacceptable.

Please join us today in getting beyond the talking points and asking Hershey, M&M/Mars and Nestle what each company is doing specifically to ensure they are respecting internationally recognized labor rights in their cocoa sourcing.

The ILRF has also released a chocolate company scorecard that ranks major chocolate companies by their commitment to the cause. Companies are ranked bitter, semi-sweet and sweet.

A really interesting fact about Hershey's -- a 'bitter' company -- that I found out through the scorecard was that Hershey's was directly culpable in the near ruin of cocoa farmers in Belize in the 1980s. The company promised high prices to the farmers, pushed them into debt, then paid them only a third of the price that had been 'guaranteed'. The enraged farmers left their cocoa to rot in the fields rather than sell to Hershey's at the unfair price. Yucks.

So, take action today, check out the scorecard and send out that petition to those 'bitter' chocolate companies.