Hey! Remember three days ago, Valentine's day? Remember how much chocolate was being handed out and given to everyone's "special person"? Well, not to make you feel bad, but when you were giving people those little momentos and that box of chocolate, just how many times did you think about the child laborers (the children and teens your age) who had to work day and night to make that food to ship to America to be put in your local store to be given to the one you love? Probably not many times, if any at all. Do you know where Cacao comes from? Yea, Africa. But, specifically, where in Africa? Think: Ivory Coast. Plantations. Lots of connections and the ability to hide child enslavement and child labor. About a 3rd of the world is supplied with Cacao from this one area, and 3.5 million people are sustained by this growing economy. And no, I am not just making this up. "The chocolate industry is worth an estimated $110 billion a year, and yet its key commodity is grown by some of the poorest people on the planet, in plantations that can hide the worst forms of child labour." says Matt Percival of CNN. "Accurate figures are impossible to come by, but up to 800,000 children are thought to work in the cocoa sector across the Ivory Coast; children who are both a symptom of and a self-perpetuating factor in a much wider problem -- poverty."
So for all you chocoholics and foodholics alike, next time you see that Hershey or Babe Ruth, maybe think about picking up some gummies instead? (And for my fellow vegetarians........ Oranges?)
Source:
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/13/world/africa/cocoa-nomics-does-chocolate-grow-on-trees/index.html?hpt=iaf_t5
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