Hot Cocoa

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On behalf of three young men from Mali who were allegedly trafficked and enslaved on a cocoa farm in the Ivory Coast, ILRF has brought suit against Nestle, Archer Daniels Midland Co., and Cargill Co. The advocacy organization has also filed suit against the U.S. government for failing to enforce the Tariff Act of 1930 (amended in 1997 and 2000), which prohibits the import of any products made with child labor.

What will happen is still up in the air, says Brian Campbell, an ILRF lawyer; however, it appears that the fight against child labor might be yet another casualty of the Bush administration's myopic Homeland Security agenda. During the course of the suit, says Campbell, "government lawyers stated to the court that Customs' priorities had changed post-9/11 to combating terrorism and that enforcing the ban on imports of goods produced by child labor is a low priority."

The U.S. government's reluctance to go after the chocolate companies is all the more reason, many say, to pursue fair-trade measures. After all, focusing only on the child labor issue does nothing to address the subsistence-level existence many cacao farmers eke out (most cacao farmers have never even tasted a chocolate bar). In fact, if farmers could secure a fair-trade minimum price, they might be less likely to turn to child labor, observes historian Lowell J. Satre in his new book, Chocolate on Trial: Slavery, Politics, and the Ethics of Business (Ohio State University Press, 2005).

"One of the reasons for the increased use of inexpensive child laborers in recent years has been the sharp drop in the price of cocoa beans," Satre writes. Lacking a steady income, cacao farmers will, many say, continue to use children to farm the notoriously labor-intensive crop.

On the other hand, fair-trade farmer cooperatives in Ghana, Indonesia, Brazil, and elsewhere have all sorts of ripple effects that build community, says Rodney North of the Bridgewater, Massachusetts-based Equal Exchange, the largest for-profit fair-trade company in the country and the first to sell fair-trade chocolate products.

"The gains from fair trade run the gamut from tangible investments in infrastructure to intangible improvements in organizational development and a community's sense of hope and confidence," North says. Farmers working with Equal Exchange distribute funds by democratic vote, including revenues to support communal projects; as often as not, higher earnings to offset low commodity prices are just as important. "Often what farmers need most is simply more income to pay for food, housing, clothing, medical care, school fees, and other essentials."

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