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ETHICS LSHM N243/LSH 2343

Semester 2, 2013

Project 1 (Group) Slavery in the Chocolate Industry

Close to half of the worlds chocolate is made from the highly prized top -quality cocoa beans that are grown on farms in the Ivory Coast and Ghana, small nations on the western side of Africa. The farmers of these poor nations are notorious, however, for sometimes relying on slaves to harvest their beans. The slaves are boys between 12 and 15 (sometimes as young as 9) who are kidnapped from villages in surrounding nations and sold to the cocoa farmers, who use whippings, beatings, and starvation to force the boys to do the hot, difficult work of clearing the fields, harvesting the beans, and drying them in the sun. The boys work form sunrise to sunset and are locked in at night in windowless rooms where they sleep on bare wooden planks. Far from home, unsure of their location, unable to speak the language, isolated in rural areas, and threatened with harsh beatings if they try to get away, the boys rarely attempts to escape their nightmare situation. Those who do try are usually caught, severely beaten as an example to others, and then locked in solitary confinement for a prolonged period of time. Every year an unknown number of boys die or are killed on the cocoa farms of the Ivory Coast and Ghana. The plight of the enslaved children was publicized around the world in September 2000 when True Vision, a British television company, took videos of slave boys on several Ivory Coast farms and broadcast a documentary in Britain and the United States. An earlier 1998 report of the United Nations Childrens Fund had concluded that many Ivory Coast farmers used sl aves, and the U.S. State Department, in its Year 2000 Human Rights Report, estimated that in recent years over 15 000 children from the neighboring nations of Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Togo had been sold into slavery in the Ivory Coast. A Knight-Ridder newspaper investigation published on June 24, 2001 called additional attention to the use of slave boys on Ivory Coast cocoa farms and largely corroborated conditions on the farms as reported by True Vision. The International Labor Organization on June 15 reported that child slavery was widespread in Ivory Coast. On June 17, 1999, a year before True Vision began publicizing the plight of the enslaved children, the International Labor Organization, had adopted a convention that committed any country that ratified the convention to immediate and effective measures to eliminate all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children. Eighty-nine countries including the United States ratified the convention, although the Ivory Coast did not.
Velasquez, M (2006), Business Ethics, Concept and Cases, Sixth Edition, Pearson International Edition, pg. 51-52.

Although slavery on farms is illegal in the Ivory Coast, the law is rarely enforced. Open borders, a shortage of enforcement officers, and the willingness of local officials to accept bribes from members of the slave trade, all contribute to the problem. In addition, prices for cocoa beans have been declining in global markets since 1996. Between 1996 and 2000, prices fell from 67 cents a pound to 51 cents, a decline of almost 25 percent and a decline that was dictated by global forces over which the farmers had no control. Stretched by such low prices, the already impoverished cocoa farmers turned to slavery to try to cut their labor costs in an attempt to survive the downturn in the global market for cocoa beans. Chocolate is a $13 billion industry in the United States; in 2000 the U.S. imported a total of 627 000 tons of cocoa. The names of the four largest U.S. chocolate manufacturers all of whom use cocoa beans from the Ivory Coast in their products are well known: Hershey Foods Corp. (maker of Hersheys milk chocolate, Reeses, Twix, Dove, and Milky Ways), Mars, Inc. (maker of M&Ms, Mars, Twix, Dove, and Milky Ways), Nestle USA, (maker of Nestle Crunch, Kit Kat, Baby Ruth, and Butterfingers), and Kraft Foods (which uses chocolate in its baking and breakfast products). Less well known, but a key part of the industry, are the names of Archer Daniels Midland Col, Barry Callebaut, and Cargill Inc., all of whom serve as middlemen who grind and process cocoa beans they acquire from the Ivory Coast and sell the product to manufacturers. That many farmers in the Ivory Coast use slave boys to farm their cocoa beans was already known to American chocolate makers when media reports first publicized the issue. In 2001, the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, a trade group of American chocolate manufacturers (whose members include Hershey, Mars, Nestle, and others), admitted to newspapers that they were aware of the use of slave boys on Ivory Coast cocoa farms. Pressured by various antislavery groups, the Chocolate Manufacturers Association stated on June 22 that it condemned these practices and agreed to fund a study of the situation. In the spotlight of continuing media attention, the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, on September 19, 2001, signed a plan entitled Protocol for the Growing and Processing of Cocoa Beans and Their Derivative Products in a Manner that Complies with ILO Convention 182 Concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor. The members of the Chocolate Manufacturers Association agreed they should investigate conditions on the cocoa farms and should establish an international foundation that could oversee and sustain efforts to eliminate child slavery on cocoa farms. In July 2002, the first survey sponsored by the Chocolate Manufacturers Association concluded that some 200 000 children not all of them slaves were working in hazardous conditions on cocoa farms. In May 2002, after substantial media attention and under pressure from U.S. Senator Tom Harkin and U.S. Representative Eliot Engel, the members of the Chocolate Manufacturers Association and the World Cocoa Foundation, together with several human rights groups and
Velasquez, M (2006), Business Ethics, Concept and Cases, Sixth Edition, Pearson International Edition, pg. 51-52.

the Ivory Coast government, signed a Memorandum of Cooperation in which they agreed to work toward ending the use of child slaves in the Ivory Coast. The members of the Chocolate Manufacturers Association agreed to fund training programs for cocoa bean farmers that would educate farmers about growing techniques while explaining the importance of avoiding the use of slave labor. They also agreed to establish a system of certification that would verify and certify that the beans used by members of the Chocolate Manufacturers Association were not harvested by slave labor. By early 2005, the difficult problem of certification still remained unsolved: How would manufacturers and distributers buying Ivory Coast cocoa beans be able to certify that slavery was not used to harvest the beans they purchased? The problem was difficult because there were more than one million cocoa farms in West Africa (600 000 in Ivory Coast and 400 000 in Ghana), most of them small family farms located in remote rural regions that were difficult to reach and lacking in infrastructure. Moreover cocoa bean farmers, poor and buffeted by the declining price of cocoa beans, carefully guard the fact that they use slaves since doing so is illegal. The beans harvested by slave boys are therefore quietly mixed together in containers and warehouses with beans harvested by free paid workers, and the two are indistinguishable. Without an effective system of certification, virtually all chocolate made from West African (Ivory Coast and Ghana) cocoa beans continued in 2005 to contain an unknown portion of chocolate made from beans harvested by young slave boys.

THE TASK
Your group has been hired by an independent and impartial body to represent a committee to further investigate the cocoa farming and subsequent purchase of cocoa products by the four major U.S. chocolate manufacturers. More importantly your committee, after its investigation and findings, must provide recommendations for the future of the cocoa bean and chocolate industry.

Velasquez, M (2006), Business Ethics, Concept and Cases, Sixth Edition, Pearson International Edition, pg. 51-52.