Supporting Slavery?

I'm feeling quite disturbed about the bag of hershey's in my room.

I was glancing at my magazine today where I came across an article that didn't have to do w/ animal advocacy, but human advocacy. (I'm halfway quoting this b/c I'm tired and lazy, and they dont' care if I do!) The vast majority of cocoa comes from small farms, mostly in financially poor areas of the global south, where children clear fields with machetes and apply dangerous pesticides. They have no idea what chocolate tastes like. Some of them are clearly enslaved. Some children work 80 to 100 hours a week, and an expose done by the British Brodacasting Company showed some of them with heavily scarred backs from beating with whips and switches. This documentary entitled "Slavery: a Global Investigation" aired five years ago. It reported that children were being bought from their parents in Mali Burkina Faso, and Togo for a nominal price then shipped to the Ivory Coast and sold to cocoa farms.

The plight of the children caught the attention of Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, and Representative Eliot Engel, a Democrat from New York. In 2001, after reading shocking media reports Engel proposed a federal system to certify and label qualified cocoa products as slave-free. Mars, Hershey's, Nestle, and other majory chocolate manufactures would not qualify. Four years later, Harken and Engel admit that the plan to eliminate slavery has failed.

To see this article, visit Friends of Animals. And if don't want to support the slave industry, there are still some chocolate companies you can know aren't partaking. Fair Trade has put their stamp of approval on some small companies, such as, Chocolate Decadence and Paul Newman which are both sold at Ukrops.