Candy company Mars uses cocoa harvested by kids in Ghana, CBS News investigation finds

And, according to John Oliver, even the chocolate companies that try to only source their product from child labor-free sources, they say they can't guarantee it. That's how much and how often children are used on these farms.

After seeing that John Oliver report, I'm never eating chocolate again. All I would be able to do would be to think of those kids.

And yes, I realize that other products I have are made from child labor, but chocolate is a pretty easy one to give up.

Meanwhile Americans eat beef from slaughter houses in the Midwest that use children as a cleaning service.

This is news? We've literally seen footage of it. This is common knowledge and something most candy companies take part in and always have

I would never buy products that are the result of child labor. Children have no sense of quality. The products would be sub-standard.

/s

The truth is, this is true for almost all chocolate.

I thought paying adults a hundred bucks a month was enough to live on so they didn't have to send their kids off to work because "cost of living is lower" ?

This is the cost of wage slavery in poverty stricken nations. The wealthy elite take the wealth of these workers and steal it by paying them nothing and importing their finished goods into the US and other wealthier nations.

You can find out all kinds of information about this on youtube by looking at "Why so expensive?" videos from business insider. We pretend like we outlawed slavery but it's still effectively alive and well.

I absolutely detest these incompetent trash journalists pretending like this is JUST a mars problem.

If you've ever eaten chocolate or seen chocolate on a shelf a child slave was used to acquire it.

There is not a single large-scale chocolate operation that does not utilize child slavery in the supply chain and pretending like this is 'only a mars issue' is fucking disgusting

And nobody actually cares. You'd expect protests whenever something like this comes out? You'd expect people to at least kick up a stink. But, no move on to the next thing. Kinda sad how little outrage there actually is to this shit. Heck, even the general attitude towards this facf from the comments here is "shrugs Well what did you expect".

Why is it so fucking hard for company executives to just be a decent human being? Damn.

I always suspected this stuff was actually made on earth.

With their price increases over the years - all the while shrinking and worsening the product - I'm reaaaallly wondering where that money's ending up. Because they sure as shit aren't paying their workers enough either.

I have this list bookmarked on my phone, it only relates to vegan chocolate though. Cannot vouch for it's accuracy / methodology.

https://foodispower.org/chocolate-list/

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/40-child-labor-farms

Youths 12 and 13 years of age may work outside of school hours in non-hazardous jobs on farms that also employ >their parent(s) or with written parental consent.

Youths under 12 years of age may work outside of school hours in non-hazardous jobs with parental consent, but >only on farms where none of the employees are subject to the minimum wage requirements of the FLSA.

Local youths 10 and 11 may hand harvest short-season crops outside school hours for no more than 8 weeks >between June 1 and October 15 if their employers have obtained special waivers from the Secretary of Labor.

That is USA federal labor laws for agriculture and children. What the fuck is the USA on about now ? Something something child labor ?

But, we knew this already? https://www.worldvision.com.au/docs/default-source/publications/human-rights-and-trafficking/our-guilty-pleasure.pdf?sfvrsn=927aec3c_4

They are still operating in Russia as well.

It tastes better when it's processed by the hands of 3rd world country children... blood and sweat of the innocent, scrumptious!!!

Cocoa is so obscure and bitter and gets processed so heavily to produce even a close approximation of "chocolate", why don't we just use broccoli? Process broccoli into broccolate, stop underpaying cocoa farmers who have to break the law and impoverish their own families and workers to make ends meet. Fuckn corpo clowns.

And in other news, water is wet

What the phrase I see floating around? There's no such thing as ethical capitalism?

Again...

Unfortunate to see.

Nice! Giving kids jobs /s

And they just bought Hotel Chocolat, one of my favourite places to go for fancy chocolate, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67436228.

So now that place will go to shit, I'll have to find another one.

i am so so so surprised

When i read title like this I can't help but wonder, are those kids going to better off without their income though ? My humble guess is that not every family have parents who can support their kids or have access to social care system that can prevent whole family to scrap by to be able to get by.

Ah yes real life oompa loompa of the chocolate world!