Chocolate Group Trying to Find New Mold
Date: 18-Nov-03
Country: USA
The nine members of the Chocolate Manufacturers Association represent over 90 percent of the chocolate processed in the United States and include industry giants Hershey Foods Corp and Nestle.
"The CMA is not an exclusive club. We represent manufacturers, but that might change in the future as I was hired to be the transition person. We are addressing the child labor issues enthusiastically on the ground," said Lynn Bragg, the new president of the CMA, in an interview with Reuters.
Bragg was quick to emphasize that the issue confronting the industry was child labor and not child slavery - a semantic distinction that tends to defuse the negative connotations of "slavery" in the minds of U.S. consumers who buy some $13 billion of sweets each year.
The chocolate industry acknowledged the problem after the media exposed the issue of child slavery and trafficking in September 2000.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) and the State Department separately acknowledged the problem of child labor in West Africa, source of approximately 70 percent of the world's output.
U.S. Representative Eliot Engel offered an amendment that would have funded a Food and Drug Administration "no-child slavery label" that could have impacted sales.
Eventually the world cocoa community combined to sign a protocol to wipe out abuses by July 2005.
PILOT PROGRAMS MAKING PROGRESS
"Pilot programs are up and running in Ghana and have started in Ivory Coast to address the labor issue and responsible or sustainable growing," said Bragg.
Bragg explained that there was a tremendous turnout by various villages to learn about acceptable labor practices and difference between child work and child labor.
The proper use of tools and pesticides have also been addressed in farmer field schools.
The civil war in top producer Ivory Coast has delayed the deployment of pilot programs there, but the industry has been distributing hand-crank radios to communicate with hard to reach or potentially dangerous regions of the country.
While the industry contends they are still on-track to correct abuses and certify the results, some dealers and analysts remain cynical.
