Lawsuit: Your Candy Bar Was Made By Child Slaves

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/30/lawsuit-your-candy-bar-was-made-by-child-slaves.html

Well worth a read, and a change in plans for Halloween. I was planning to hand out the usual snickers, kitkats, hershey's special dark and the like. I can't in good conscience now, I'd feel like a total ghoul, handing out candy made with child slave labour to other children. I'll have to rethink what I'm handing out.

Thanks to @rodimusprime on twitter for the link.

It is this irony that serves as the motivation behind a class action lawsuit filed Monday against Hershey and two of its competitors, Mars and Nestle. The complaints, filed by three California residents, allege that the companies are guilty of false advertising for failing to disclose the use of child slavery on their packaging. Without it, the plaintiffs claim, the companies are deceiving consumers into “unwittingly” supporting the child slave labor trade.

The boys’ stories are sickeningly graphic. Before beatings, the boys say they were stripped naked and tied up. They were then pummeled with a variety of weapons, from fists and feet to belts and whips. In the film, some of the boys get up and imitate the beatings. Others stand to reveal hundreds of scars lining their backs and torsos—some still bloody and scabbed. They get quiet when the filmmakers ask whether any are beaten today and say some are simply “taken away.”

Asked what he’d say to the billions who eat chocolate worldwide (most of the boys have never tried it), one boy replies: “They enjoy something I suffered to make; I worked hard for them but saw no benefit. They are eating my flesh.” Toward the end of the segment, the filmmakers meet with one of the “slave masters,” who admits he purchased the young boys and that some of his men routinely beat them. His reasoning: He is paid a low price for the cocoa and thus needs to harvest as much of it as he possibly can.

ETA: A link to a list of chocolate *probably* not made using exploitative labour. This site points out that most organic cocoa comes from Latin America, which does not have documented issues with slave labour on cocoa plantations.

http://www.foodispower.org/chocolate-list/

[Luminous Animal]

1. And this is why I only buy chocolate from Equal Exchange

Yes. It is expensive. And, it is very good chocolate (hershey's, nestles' and the like, have a hint of vomit taste) and I eat less chocolate but when I do eat it, I thoroughly enjoy the experience.

Here is a link to their page on child labor.

http://equalexchange.coop/products/chocolate/faqs/where-can-i-learn-more-about-cocoa-industrys-child-labor-issue

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. I'm not a big fan of Hershey's or the other big names either, as far as taste goes.

Especially since I like around 85% cacao, but I was annoyed to find out Scharffenburger is owned by one of the big three, since I'd bought it a time or two in the past. But it's a double whammy, as it was also on the list of chocolates carrying some nasty impurity - I can't find that list, but here's an article on chocolates with lead and cadmium, ugh.

http://munchies.vice.com/articles/chocolate-products-full-of-heavy-metals