PRESS RELEASES

Clothes, then chickens but what about chocolate?

Primark and Tesco have suddenly become aware that the public are bothered about who makes their clothes and who picks their food.

Do we know where the millions of chocolate bars have come from?

Do we know who has picked the cocoa beans to make the chocolate?

Have they been paid?

The only thing paid for is the child worker.

On some farms children have been trafficked to work as slaves to pick the beans.

Industry say there are only a few but how many slaves is our chocolate worth?

In 2005 there was an estimated figure of 12,000 children who had been trafficked into Ivory Coast to work as slaves on the cocoa plantations. The children who pick the cocoa beans earn nothing, sold by the trafficker and made to suffer.

In 2006 the chocolate industry had a reported turnover of $39,585,800,000 from just the top 10 companies.

They promised in 2001 to eradicate the worst forms of exploitative labour from their industry by 2005. They failed.  They promised to do it by July 1st 2008 by putting in place certification of each farm that it was slave free.

Tragically they have redefined certification so it now merely means surveying the situation. On top of that they target only 50% of the cocoa producing regions in Ivory Coast and Ghana instead of the required 100%.

Industry has already begun to say they have met their obligations.

Industry can already tell us if our chocolate is additive free, sugar free, fat free or colour free.  But they will not tell us it is slave free because they can’t.

It isn’t.

STOP THE TRAFFIK is calling for the chocolate industry to deliver on its 2001 promise and to enable us to buy chocolate that is traffik free.

For more info contact:
Ruth Dearnley 07795606708

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