July 1st, 2008 was supposed to be the deadline for the chocolate industry to fulfill their commitment to end the worst forms of child labor in cocoa production. The day has come and gone with nary an ounce of change. Global Exhchange’s Fair Trade Campaign Director, Adrienne Fitch-Frankel, updates us on the current cocoa situation…
An excerpt of the article:
Even though the chocolate industry committed to ending the worst forms of child labor in cocoa production by today — July 1, 2008 — the slave-free label is still missing from lots of chocolate boxes…and chocolate bars and ice cream and syrup and other products made with cocoa. And it’s not just because industry talked Congress into a voluntary agreement in place of the 2001 legislation that would have created a mandatory slave-free label for chocolate, which was passed in the House of Representatives by a landslide. It is also because virtually none of the chocolate you buy as a consumer could be certified as “slave-free” if that label existed today. [Read the rest of the article.]
For more information about Global Exchange’s Fair Trade Cocoa campaign, click here. Since the chocolate industry isn’t stepping up to the plate, it’s up to you, the consumer, to make a difference.