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Candy company Mars uses cocoa harvested by kids in Ghana, CBS News investigation finds (www.cbsnews.com)

submitted 1 year ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/world@lemmy.world

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[-] trackcharlie@lemmynsfw.com 26 points 1 year ago

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

[-] cleverusernametry@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Source? Especially that it's slavery and not just the children working on the family farm

[-] PolarisFx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago

John Oliver did a Halloween episode on the cocoa industry, and yea its slavery by a different name. Kids are getting sent to the "family farm" but never see their family again

https://youtu.be/FwHMDjc7qJ8?si=tmT-ryxtXdTdAq0a

[-] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 2 points 1 year ago

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[-] trackcharlie@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 1 year ago

Here's a wide variety of sources/dates to get you started since this is something that, much like the oil industry and climate change, has been massively lied about in the media in order to prevent any action from forming against the associated companies because that would actually negatively impact them. (Maybe, I personally doubt it since all 'off brand' and 'no name brand' shit is just name brand with shittier packaging now days, there's zero competition in this market and zero incentive for these corporations to improve when all they have to do is cause a controversy to offend an active group on twitter to have any serious discourse of their court cases disappear in a jumble of brainless arguments over superficial garbage).

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57522186 https://cocoarunners.com/chocopedia/the-dark-history-of-chocolate-slavery/ https://foodispower.org/human-labor-slavery/slavery-chocolate/ https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/12/mars-nestle-and-hershey-to-face-landmark-child-slavery-lawsuit-in-us

Additionally an honors thesis with all the associated references inside: https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=honorscollege_ehc

There's only extremely small farms that are not run by slavery and that chocolate does not make it to north american or european markets, regardless of what the stickers say.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-nestle-in-child-slavery-case.html https://www.courthousenews.com/candy-giants-sued-over-failure-to-end-child-labor-on-chocolate-plantations-in-ghana/

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-416_i4dj.pdf https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2022/06/28/backed-by-big-law-hershey-nestle-dodge-second-child-slavery-case/

The sugar industry and all related industries are industries of death, they only profit by stealing tax incentives after bribing politicians and using slavery, they don't need or want to make money they're just in it for the mergers and acquisitions which can suppress competition, hide losses, and increase their own power over the markets they work in, at the expense of everyone's health (with the amount of sugar in food these days) and at the expense of peoples freedom.

Here's an investigation by cbs that was released yesterday which has child slaves (as young as five years old) active as late as last week: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/candy-company-uses-cocoa-harvested-by-child-labor-cbs-news-investigation/ar-AA1kKztT

And here's basically the same findings from 20 years ago https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cocoa-and-slavery/ which, of course, all the associated companies said they 'fixed the problem with our third party suppliers that were using slavery without telling us' and then they get off by buying the judge.

Slavery never stopped we just exported it to get people to stop bitching.

[-] echodot@feddit.uk 4 points 1 year ago

Fair trade chocolate exists of course

[-] danciestlobster@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

Fair trade is quite a fallable system too unfortunately. And the honest answer is it isn't truly known what chocolate has slavery involved for just regular child labor but it is fairly safe to assume most at least are likely to involve it, even fair trade and other similar certifications

[-] PolarisFx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

Yea apparently the farms know in advance about the inspections and move the kids somewhere else during inspection and they're back the next day.

this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023

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