cadbury child labour case study solution

Child Slave Labor in Cadbury Chocolate Company Case Study

In Cadbury case analysis, the central issue is child slave labor that was being used in the production of chocolate. This issue led Congress to create legislation that called for the USFDA to create a “no forced labor” accreditation that could be appended to chocolate by manufacturers who could ascertain that their supply chains did not use slave labor.

The accusations of slave and child labor in the cocoa chain negative impacted the Cadbury Company significantly. In tabulated form, this paper seeks to describe each significant symptom (problem or case fact), causes of the symptoms, both surface causes and underlying ones, and recommendations for improvements and management principles used.

The majority of problems seem to have stemmed from poor leadership and communication from Cadbury. The decision to end slave or child labor would cause the least amount of harm than the most significant benefit it will reap. The companies might lose some profits by paying better wages to workers, but this will increase the rights and living conditions of people exponentially.

The children will get the rights they deserve and be free as no human should be subjected to slavery. Additionally, Legislations attempt to force cocoa companies to change the method of farming rates lie well under the core ethic of justice. Justice for the employees should be paid instead of enslavement and impartiality by Cadbury and the company should acknowledge that their products are produced through slave labor.

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IvyPanda. (2022, July 19). Child Slave Labor in Cadbury Chocolate Company. https://ivypanda.com/essays/child-slave-labor-in-cadbury-chocolate-company/

"Child Slave Labor in Cadbury Chocolate Company." IvyPanda , 19 July 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/child-slave-labor-in-cadbury-chocolate-company/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Child Slave Labor in Cadbury Chocolate Company'. 19 July.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Child Slave Labor in Cadbury Chocolate Company." July 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/child-slave-labor-in-cadbury-chocolate-company/.

1. IvyPanda . "Child Slave Labor in Cadbury Chocolate Company." July 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/child-slave-labor-in-cadbury-chocolate-company/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Child Slave Labor in Cadbury Chocolate Company." July 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/child-slave-labor-in-cadbury-chocolate-company/.

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Children as young as 10 harvest cocoa for maker of Cadbury's creme eggs, investigation finds

The children use 3 foot long machetes to clear weeds and crack cocoa pods, a Channel 4 crew found

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An investigation into the cocoa farms that supply Cadbury’s parent company has captured footage of child labour in West Africa, where children as young as 10 handle sharp machetes with no protective clothing.

U.K. ‘s Channel 4 aired an investigation that found children as young as 10 working at a cocoa farm in Ghana in sweltering heat, wielding sharp knives and working for up to nine hours a day.

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The children use 3 foot long machetes to clear hard weeds and crack cocoa pods, then carry the heavy loads for miles across farmland. Many receive serious injuries and risk snake bites while employed under dangerous conditions without any protective clothing, the investigation found.

The cocoa farmers are paid less than $3.30 per day and say they cannot afford to hire adult workers, forcing many of them to use their children, reporter Antony Barnett told the Sun. “They take them out of school to work on the farm. But there were also cases where it wasn’t children belonging to the family, but they’d been brought from elsewhere to work on the farm.”

The practices were linked directly to Mondelez International, Cadbury’s parent company, which also has operations in Canada. Cadbury is England’s biggest chocolate company and, according to Cadbury World, makes about 500 million creme eggs a year, a popular Easter treat in North America.

Mondelez made $5.4bn in profits globally, according to its latest financial results. Its website states: “We believe the work of children is education and play. No amount of child labour in the cocoa supply chain should be acceptable.”

In a statement, spokesperson for Mondelez International said: “We’re deeply concerned by the incidents documented in the Dispatches programme. We explicitly prohibit child labour in our operations and have been working relentlessly to take a stand against this, making significant efforts through our Cocoa Life programme to improve the protection of children in the communities where we source cocoa, including in Ghana.

“The welfare of the children and families featured is our primary concern and we commit to investigating further so we can provide any support needed. As part of our Cocoa Life programme, we have child labour monitoring and remediation systems in place in Ghana, which means community members and NGO partners are trained to provide assistance to vulnerable children, and once identified, we can help to address any cases of child labour.”

An estimated 1.56 million children work under hazardous conditions in cocoa farm in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, according to a University of Chicago study from 2020. The two countries combined supply 60 per cent of the world’s cocoa.

Under Ghanaian law, it’s illegal for children younger than 13 to work and no one under age 18 is allowed to participate in hazardous work. However, Barnett said the source of labour on cocoa farms was plain to see.

“From what we saw, child labor was everywhere,” said Barnett. “We didn’t have to go looking for children working on farms – we visited four farms in 12 days, during the harvest, and found evidence of child labor on every one.

“The farms are very remote and hard to get to, so we were limited in our scope but had we visited more farms, I believe we would have seen more. It seemed to be endemic in my view.”

Here’s where your so-called ‘ethical’ chocolate is really coming from. Farms supplying cocoa beans for Cadbury’s chocolate are using illegal child labour - including children as young as 10, #Dispatches has discovered. Watch tonight on @channel4 at 8pm pic.twitter.com/EIbnA3ehnW — Channel 4 Dispatches (@C4Dispatches) April 4, 2022

In the first cocoa farm Barnett visited, he saw children carrying long poles to collect cocoa pods from palm trees. There he met two brothers ages 10 and 11, who toiled for hours under the hot sun and struggled while carrying heavy loads over their heads for miles across farmland.

The youngest showed Barnett a scar on his leg where a machete had cut him.

At another farm, a young girl recounted being bit by a rattlesnake while clearing brush on a cocoa farm. Her father, who works as a cocoa farmer, said he had to take out a loan to take her to a hospital. The farmer said he only makes 4020 cedis, or $665 a year, and has trouble feeding his family.

Ayn Riggs, founder of Slave Free Chocolate, said the problem is chocolate companies have been promising to clean up their act for “20 years.”

“If they really wanted to stamp out child labor, there’s an easy first step that they haven’t done yet, which is paying the farmers a lot more for their beans,” she said.

Only up to 11 per cent of the cost of a single bar of dark chocolate goes back to the cocoa farmer.

“The money is there. But on the farms, these farmers can’t afford to replace their children with an adult laborer.”

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Cadbury company accused of using child labor on cocoa farms in Ghana

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Cadbury, a British multinational candy company, faces fresh accusations of illegal child labor exploitation after a new TV documentary showed children as young as 10 using machetes to harvest cocoa pods.

According to an episode titled, “ Cadbury Exposed: Dispatches,” released by Channel 4 on Monday, April 4, the cocoa farmers are paid less than $3 per day, which makes hiring adult workers unaffordable. As a result, the children work in grueling conditions to help turn the bitter, African plant into sweet European desserts.

“It’s horrifying to see these children using these long machetes, which are sometimes half their height,” Ayn Riggs said in a statement published by the Guardian , an internationally respected British news outlet. 

Illegal child labour is being used to supply cocoa beans to Cadbury – Britain’s favourite chocolate brand. #Dispatches has been undercover in Ghana where children as young as 10 have been working gruelling hours to supply cocoa beans to Cadbury. pic.twitter.com/nS90jyBr8w — Channel 4 Dispatches (@C4Dispatches) April 4, 2022

Riggs is the founder of Slave Free Chocolate , which campaigns against child labor on cocoa farms of West Africa. The organization continues to push for candy companies like Mars, Nestlé, Hershey, Cargill, Cadbury, Mondel?z and Barry Callebaut to accept accountability for child labor within their supply chains. The group is urging companies to pay more for the cocoa they purchase so that farmers can hire adult workers only.

“Chocolate companies promised to clean this up over 20 years ago. They knew they were profiting from child labour and have shirked their promises,” Riggs added.

The recent release of the investigation comes as millions of Europeans in the U.K. prepare to consume chocolate for the Easter holiday.

Child Labor in West African cocoa farms still an endemic issue

Back in 2001, the International Labour Organization (ILO), members of U.S. Congress, and representatives from the World’s largest chocolate companies agreed to end child slavery on West African cocoa farms and child labor throughout the international supply chains.

The agreement included establishing international labor standards, independent monitoring, and public certification that the cocoa used in chocolate or related products was grown and processed without forced or child labor.

“This is another step forward to eradicating everywhere the exploitation of children in the work place,”  ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said in 2001.

Meanwhile, the initiative’s targets were postponed and adjusted in 2005 and 2008 before settling on a revised target goal in 2010.

Yet over the last two decades, child labor in cocoa farms has only increased. Ghana and Ivory Coast are the two largest exporters of cocoa in the world. More than 1.5 million children were involved in the cocoa industry, according to a 2020 study by NORC , a social research group at the University of Chicago. Roughly 43 percent of those children were involved in hazardous work.

The new TV documentary from Channel 4 showed children using sharp knives to open the cocoa pods. They were also filmed swinging long sticks with blades tied to them, though none of the children were wearing protective clothing.

Child laborer “afraid” to stop working

The daughter of one farmer said she had sliced her foot open while using a long machete in another case of child labor. She also claimed to be supplying Mondelez International, parent company of Cadbury.

Under Ghanaian law , it is illegal for children under 13 to work on cocoa farms. There is also a ban on anyone under 18 being involved in hazardous labor. That hasn’t stopped desperate farmers from employing children, even forcing some of them to work.

According to the documentary, a niece of the farmer said she thought she was going to her uncle’s farm to help take care of other children. She says she was instead forced to work long hours on the farm and not allowed to return to school. When asked why she did not speak out, she said she was “afraid” .

Chocolate remains a multibillion dollar industry even as child labor has remained a constant issue for decades.

Mondelez International responds to accusations

Mondelez International (formerly known as Kraft Foods) is the parent company of Cadbury after the U.S. conglomerate bought out the British candy company in a controversial move in 2010.

For its part, a spokesperson for Mondelez International downplayed the accusations while expressing concern for them.

“We’re deeply concerned by the incidents documented in the Dispatches programme. We explicitly prohibit child labour in our operations and have been working relentlessly to take a stand against this, making significant efforts through our Cocoa Life programme to improve the protection of children in the communities where we source cocoa, including in Ghana.”

On its website, Mondelez International claims “No amount of child labour in the cocoa supply chain should be acceptable.” The conglomerate brought in more than 3.3 billion pounds globally last year, which translates to more than $4.2 billion. 

“At the very least the companies profiting from these children are the ones that have to fix it,” Slave Free Chocolate states on its website. “They can start by paying a lot more for the beans that they buy. When a farmer is making less than $2.00, they can’t afford to hire adult labor.” 

Slave Free Chocolate also lists chocolate companies who use ethical labor practices as it works to push the industry to eliminate child slave labor.

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Deon Osborne was born in Minneapolis, MN and raised in Lawton, OK before moving to Norman where he attended the University of Oklahoma. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Strategic Media and has... More by Deon Osborne

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‘Brands to avoid’: Mars and Cadbury among chocolate firms criticised in ethics report

Only 17 out of 82 companies investigated were found to use suppliers that paid cocoa farmers enough to live on.

Leading chocolate brands have been criticised for having “inadequate” ethical standards in their cocoa supply chain in a report from Ethical Consumer. Only 17 out of 82 brands investigated by the consumer organisation were judged to be using chocolate from suppliers that ensured farmers were paid enough to live on.

As a result, there is a risk that Advent calendars, chocolate Santas and other Christmas treats will have been produced with child labour. About 60% of the world’s cocoa comes from west Africa, and about six in 10 cocoa-growing households in Ghana are estimated to use child labour, with four in 10 in Ivory Coast .

Ethical Consumer recommended Tony’s Chocolonely, Divine and Chocolat Madagascar among the brands which paid Fairtrade International or Rainforest Alliance rates or higher, and use chocolate made in the country of origin rather than from imported beans. That helps the economies of cocoa-producing countries rather than European manufacturers.

It rated Mars, Nestlé and Mondelēz , which owns Cadbury, as poor and “brands to avoid”, while Ferrero was rated poor.

Each has a sustainability scheme, but the researchers said that these schemes “tend to cover just a proportion of the company’s cocoa suppliers”, which means that some farmers do not benefit.

Last year, Channel 4’s Dispatches found that 10-year-old children were using machetes to harvest cocoa destined for Mondelēz’s supply chain.

The 82 brands were also measured on tax conduct, use of palm oil, deforestation and plastic and packaging.

Jasmine Owens at Ethical Consumer said: “The chocolate industry is incredibly unequal, with many cocoa farmers living in poverty while international chocolate companies are raking in billions of pounds.

“Most of the world’s chocolate is grown in west Africa , and the conditions for farmers are in general really appalling. But it’s European and UK consumers who eat most of it. So we really do have a huge amount of power and responsibility over conditions for farmers in west Africa because we’re the reason why they’re harvesting the cocoa.”

Owens said that buying chocolate from brands such as Fairafric, ’57 Chocolate and Chocolat Madagascar was expensive and could be hard to get hold of but they were good “as a treat or a present”, while Tony’s Chocolonely was widely available in supermarkets and “really trying to change the chocolate industry”.

Joke Aerts, of Tony’s Open Chain, the company’s supply chain platform, said it was trying “to put human rights at the core of purchasing practices” by using traceable cocoa beans, paying the living income reference price (the amount a typical farmer needs to make to be able to live), helping farming co-ops to become more professional, working with them for at least five-year periods, and helping farmers improve crop yields so they had less incentive to clear land to plant more cacao trees.

A report by the National Opinion Research Centre at the University of Chicago in 2020 found that 43% of children living in cocoa-growing areas in Ghana and Ivory Coast were engaged in hazardous child labour, amounting to about 1.56 million children.

Often these children are taken out of school to work on the farm by their parents, according to Katie Bird of the International Cocoa Initiative, a nonprofit working to end child labour and forced labour in cocoa. “Farmer poverty is a significant contributing factor,” she said. “There is a role for the cocoa industry, quite clearly, but also for governments in cocoa-producing countries, civil society organisations, producers themselves and a role for cocoa-consuming countries as well.” That means also ensuring access to good quality schooling, healthcare and helping farmers diversify.

Ghana and Ivory Coast have laws against child labour, and police patrol some plantations. Yet the size of the cocoa-growing areas makes them hard to police, according to Mike Rogerson, a lecturer in operations management at Sussex University and an expert on modern slavery in supply chains.

“Cocoa prices are set globally, annually, and they always disappoint everyone that follows these negotiations except the four largest companies using cocoa,” said Rogerson. “Companies not paying a proper price effectively means that parents can’t afford to make a living and look after the family on their own.”

He said it was hard for companies to track where their cocoa had come from because farmers sometimes sell beans to each other, since cocoa is typically traded in 50kg bags, and beans are often mixed in different processing centres. It would cost the industry about £4m a year to trace cocoa beans using their DNA, he said, but so far there has been little interest in the technology from any chocolate company.

Mondelēz did not respond directly but referred to its sustainability report which said it aims to source all of its chocolate through its Cocoa Life programme by 2025 and increase the number of farmers in the programme to 300,000 by 2030.

A Nestlé spokesperson said: “We believe that Ethical Consumer’s assessment of our approach does not reflect the comprehensive detail we provided about our work, and therefore does not represent the extent of our efforts to sustainability source cocoa for our products.

“At Nestlé, we have pioneered industry-leading projects and initiatives to further improve the sustainable sourcing of cocoa for our products and to help improve farmers’ livelihoods.”

Nestlé runs an “income accelerator programme” with 10,000 farm families in Ivory Coast, allowing them to earn up to €500 extra a year for two years, and aims to reach 160,000 families by 2030.

A Ferrero spokesperson said: “Our cocoa is 100% sourced through independently managed standards such as Rainforest Alliance, Fairtrade Foundation and Cocoa Horizons.”

Ferrero said it worked with farmer groups on improving livelihoods by increasing cocoa productivity and diversifying, and supporting the wellbeing of women and children and the environment.

“We committed to paying the Living Income Differential, which we support, and we also pay all farmers a cash premium on top of the commercial price,” the company said.

“Ferrero remains committed to its cocoa sustainability programme to achieve a positive and lasting impact on the cocoa value chain.”

A spokesperson for Mars said: “Our ambition is that 100% of our cocoa is responsibly sourced globally and is traceable by 2025 – going beyond the current level of certification standards and practices and committing us to action across three focus areas that puts farmers, communities and the environment at the centre of our efforts.

“We’re taking concrete action to make a difference in cocoa growing communities, which is why we launched our Cocoa for Generations strategy in 2018 – a farmer-first initiative, backed by a billion-dollar investment over 10-years, that addresses farmer income and welfare in a multifaceted way because it is proven that pricing alone isn’t the answer.”

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Cadbury faces claims its chocolate is sourced from farms using child labour

A Channel 4 investigation found links between your crème egg and children as young as 10 harvesting cocoa beans in Ghana.

Cadbury chocolate. Credit: Pixabay

For most children in the UK, Easter eggs come from the Easter bunny. But a new documentary exposes where our chocolate actually comes from, with allegations of exploitation in the Cadbury supply chain.

A Channel 4 investigation claims children as young as 10 in Ghana are harvesting cocoa beans for food industry giant Mondelēz International, which owns Cadbury. 

Undercover footage in a Dispatches film broadcast on Monday shows children barefoot, wearing shorts and T-shirts, using machetes to harvest cocoa pods and clear weeds, wielding sharpened sticks to open the beans. Farmers are paid less than £2 a day , according to campaigners, and say they can’t afford to employ adults.

Anthony Barnett, the documentary reporter said: “Our investigation links Cadbury to child labour for the first time and shows how the brand has been misleading consumers on how ethical its chocolate really is.” 

Here’s where your so-called ‘ethical’ chocolate is really coming from. Farms supplying cocoa beans for Cadbury’s chocolate are using illegal child labour – including children as young as 10, #Dispatches has discovered. Watch tonight on @channel4 at 8pm pic.twitter.com/EIbnA3ehnW — Channel 4 Dispatches (@C4Dispatches) April 4, 2022

A spokesperson for Mondelēz International said “We’re deeply concerned by the incidents documented in the Dispatches programme. We explicitly prohibit child labour in our operations and have been working relentlessly to take a stand against this.” 

Mondelēz proudly proclaims its ethical credentials through its Cocoa Life programme, an initiative intended to remove child labour in its supply chain, prevent deforestation and “empower communities”.

Many of the children in the Dispatches exposé were filmed working alone in dangerous conditions without supervision or protective clothing and carrying heavy loads. One girl said she was told she would help with childcare on her uncle’s farm but instead was forced into working long hours instead of attending school. More than 90 per cent of the world’s chocolate is produced on such small farms, according to Cocoa Life.

With Easter right around the corner and the Cocoa Life stamp of approval on many of Cadbury’s products, many may end up wondering where their chocolate comes from.

Consumer insights company Kantar reports the UK spent £153 million on Easter eggs in 2021, a figure that is expected to rise in 2022. Approximately 500 million crème eggs are made every year, two thirds of which are sold in the UK, according to Cadbury. That’s 3.5 eggs for each person in the country.

A Mondelēz International spokesperson told the Guardian: “The welfare of the children and families featured is our primary concern and we commit to investigating further so we can provide any support needed. 

“As part of our Cocoa Life programme, we have child labour monitoring and remediation systems in place in Ghana, which means community members and NGO partners are trained to provide assistance to vulnerable children, and once identified, we can help to address any cases of child labour.” The company said it had requested additional information from the Dispatches team so it could investigate.

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Cadbury’s chocolate is made with cacao farmed by suppliers using child labour, I met the victims in Ghana

Antony barnett, presenter of channel 4's ‘cadbury exposed: dispatches’, visited farms in west africa used by the brand's cocoa supplier - he writes exclusively for i about his shocking findings.

Its family-friendly image, much-loved TV adverts and delicious tasting chocolate has made Cadbury one of Britain’s favourite brands. It certainly used to be one of mine.

As for so many people, my love affair with its chocolate began as a child. For me, it was Cadbury’s crumbliest, flakiest Flake that won my heart. It wasn’t the suggestive adverts of a woman in a bath that seduced me, but the fact that every Friday evening my mum would come back from Romford market with a pack of Flakes and share them out with me and my sister as a special weekly treat. And boy, did it taste like chocolate never tasted before.

For the past two decades, it’s been a daily bar of Whole Nut that’s stoked my love affair with the company set up in Birmingham in the 19th century by the Quaker Cadbury family. But not any longer. I am dumping Cadbury.

For the young children I met working on cacao farms in Ghana, any sort of treat is as much as a fantasy as a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s factory. In fact, most of the kids I spoke to didn’t even know what chocolate was, which might seem hard to believe given they had spent hours in gruelling conditions doing hazardous work in the sweltering heat to harvest cocoa beans that end up in the supply chain used by Cadbury.

Most of the kids were being forced to miss school to help their families who are living in abject poverty, hoping to earn enough money for food and other essentials.

Chocolate is a multi-billion pound global industry but child labour in the chocolate supply chain has been a problem for decades. Twenty years ago, the large confectionary brands promised to remedy the situation – but despite repeated pledges over the years, little appears to have changed.

Channel 4’s Dispatches team began investigating the chocolate industry last year after we obtained evidence of child labour on cocoa farms in Ghana. As a Cadbury superfan, I wanted to know if my favourite bars of chocolate were implicated in this scandalous exploitation.

These days, nearly every Cadbury bar or Creme Egg you pick up has a green Cocoa Life logo on its purple packaging, suggesting to consumers that its cocoa beans come from ethical sources.

Cadbury’s chocolate comes from beans grown on thousands of farms which are part of the Cocoa Life scheme, set up in 2012 to “help communities in cocoa regions”, according to the Cadbury website .

There, you will find a lot of boasting about how “sustainable” its chocolate is, and glossy images appear to show Cocoa Life improving the lives of families and their children. One section explains how it’s helping to stamp out child labour so that “children will have opportunities to grow and learn.”

Cocoa Life is run by the $86bn US confectionary giant Mondelez International , which bought Cadbury in 2010. Its own website proclaims how important it is “to make cocoa, the essence of chocolate, right”, including tackling the challenges of “poverty and child labour”.

For our investigation into the truth behind these statements – which airs on Monday night in Cadbury Exposed: Dispatches – we spent 12 days visiting farms in a region of Ghana that we knew had hundreds of farms in the Cadbury supply chain.

Mondelez publishes coordinates of Cocoa Life farms on its website, so we used GPS technology to ensure we were visiting ones it has listed. We carried out additional checks on the ground to confirm the beans were part of Cadbury’s supply chain – including visiting the depots where the beans are dispatched.

Cocoa Life’s website states: “We believe the work of children is education and play. No amount of child labour in the cocoa supply chain should be acceptable.” Try telling that to the children we filmed on Cocoa Life farms.

Take the two young brothers aged 10 and 12 who were furiously slashing at weeds, using long machetes almost half their size, to help ensure the cocoa trees get enough water. They were pouring with sweat after hours of this exhausting, back-breaking and dangerous work – all done during the searing, equatorial heat. One of the boys showed us a scar from a previous injury while weeding in this way.

Under Ghanaian law, no child under 13 should be working on cocoa farms. Any hazardous tasks that are harmful to a child’s health or safety are classed by the United Nations as the “worst forms of child labour” and this is supposed to be banned in Ghana for anybody under 18.

We also filmed the young boys breaking open cacao pods using sharp knives that could easily slice off part of a finger, and plucking pods overhead using knives tied to long sticks.

But there was worse to come. Working alongside the brothers was their cousin Michelle, who was about 14 years old. She was very reluctant to chat, but when we were able to get her alone, Michelle opened up about how she came from the north of Ghana and was expecting to help with childcare when she moved, but she had been put to work on the farm.

She told us she had not had any contact with her parents or siblings for five years and is not allowed to go to school. Michelle claimed she was being forced to work – and when we asked why she doesn’t complain to anybody, she told us she was “afraid”.

This was the reality on a Cocoa Life farm – far removed from the happy images Cadbury puts on its website. The family were earning less than £2 a day picking Cocoa Life beans and had little choice but to put the kids to work, just to make sure they had enough food to eat.

We wanted to know if this was an isolated case in this part of the country – and it wasn’t long before we had our answer.

We spoke to several Cocoa Life farmers and nearly all were critical of the support they receive. Most were struggling to make ends meet and forced to use children to help on the plantations.

Stephen told us he used a 12-year-old boy to work because he just couldn’t afford to pay for adult labourers. For months of hard and sometimes dangerous work, Stephen sent the boy’s father just £35. Once again, it all seemed far removed from the smiling faces of cacao farmers posted on Cadbury’s website.

For each bag of Cocoa Life beans picked, a family will earn around £80. This is made up of the fixed price of around £80 set by the Ghanaian government, and the chocolate companies pay a premium on top of this. We were told that in the case of Cocoa Life, this premium works out around a £1 a bag.

This year the cacao harvest has been poor and some families told us they would only be able to pick enough beans for six bags during the year, which equates to £1.35 a day – around the price of two small bars of Dairy Milk.

Each bag they fill contains enough cocoa beans to help make chocolate for around 4,000 bars, but they end up with a fraction of what we pay for one of these bars in the shops.

For another farmer we met, Joshua, this lack of money means his two daughters have to miss school to work on the farm. When we met him, he put on his Cocoa Life polo shirt to show us a gift Mondelez had given him.

He wanted us to meet his daughters to explain how difficult life was for them. His eldest, Sarah, was 17 and had worked on her father’s farm since she was 13. She told us she was recovering from a nasty injury caused by slashing herself in the foot with a machete while weeding.

Her 10-year-old sister had been bitten by a snake while on the farm, but in both cases the family didn’t have enough money to pay for hospital treatment, so they had to wait a day until they could arrange a loan.

Sarah told us the lack of money her father got for the cocoa beans meant she had to miss school when there was work to be done on the farm, because her dad couldn’t afford to pay for adult labourers. She told us she really wanted to spend more time at school so she could pass her exams and train to become a nurse or a midwife.

Talking to these families really brought home how child labour can blight a young person’s life. These are just the type of people Cocoa Life claims it is helping. But to me, it seemed that this was a community that Cocoa Life and Cadbury had forgotten.

So what should Cadbury be doing? Campaigners say it primarily boils down to two things: offering farmers truly sustainable pay with increased investment into communities and having a stronger auditing system.

The large confectionary giants claim the problem of child labour in West Africa is a complex and long-standing issue which can’t be solved by a single company.

Campaigners like Ayn Riggs – founder of Slave Free Chocolate – disagree. She says the first action that could help is for a hugely profitable multinational corporation like Cadbury’s owner, Mondelez International, to pay more for its cocoa beans. Last year Mondelez made some $4bn in profits and its chairman and chief executive Dirk Van de Put earnt more than $18m.

Riggs told us they have been promising to fix this for 20 years but now need to fund an independent monitoring system.

“Mondelez has enough money to fix this problem,” she said. “What I would like to see and what is very, very important is that we have truly independent monitoring, so we are not constantly only relying on journalists to find out what is really going on at those plantations.”

Audits should be carried out without warning, so that any child workers cannot be ushered away in advance.

Riggs called on the British public to act. She said: “The good news is that we as consumers have all the power here… If we choose not to buy Cadbury products, that message will go straight to the CEO of Mondelez. And that in turn, will force them to rethink their policies and begin to treat these farmers properly.”

We wanted to talk to the Mondelez CEO, Dirk Van De Put , and show him our evidence, but he refused to be interviewed. Instead, in a statement, Mondelez did not dispute our findings and told us they were “deeply concerned by the incidents” documented by Dispatches and they would launch an investigation. They said they “explicitly prohibit child labour” in their operations and have made “significant efforts” to improve the protection of children where they source cocoa, including setting up a monitoring system. They said they strongly reject “any allegation that Mondelez benefits from child labour, which we have relentlessly taken a stand against”.

We can’t disclose the name of the Ghanaian places we visited, to ensure the safety of our sources, and we have blurred the faces of the children we met. We were only able to visit a small number of Cocoa Life farms on our short trip – and I have no evidence that child labour is used on other farms. But judging by what we saw at those we did visit, clearly whatever Mondelez is doing is not enough. Despite the huge distances needed to be covered over difficult terrain, we saw several examples of child labour linked to its supply chain. Some was illegal, some was dangerous and others bordered on slavery.

Cadbury’s chocolate may still taste like chocolate never tasted before, but until they can prove to me that their words are more than just empty promises, Cadbury chocolate will not be passing my lips again.

Names have been changed to protect identities

Antony Barnett is the presenter of Cadbury Exposed: Dispatches , airing on Channel 4 on Monday 4 April at 8pm

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It may be a rocky Easter for Cadbury as they face new child labor allegations

An investigation found that children as young as ten were working with machetes in fields in ghana to harvest cocoa, by kelly mcclure.

" Cadbury Exposed ," a new documentary series led by Antony Barnett, takes a close look at the labor practices of the popular chocolate brand, particularly in relation to children.

The documentary, which airs on Monday via  Channel 4  Dispatches in the UK, contains footage showing children, some as young as ten years old, working with machetes in fields in Ghana to harvest cocoa pods for Mondelēz International, owner of Cadbury, for the U.S. equivalent of less than $3 a day. 

Related:  Republicans have new idea to fix labor shortage: Loosen child labor laws

According to The Guardian , this documentary puts Cadbury up against allegations similar to ones they vowed more than two decades ago never to make again.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter , Crash Course.

"It's horrifying to see these children using these long machetes, which are sometimes half their height," says Ayn Riggs, founder of Slave Free Chocolate in a quote used by The Guardian. "Chocolate companies promised to clean this up over 20 years ago. They knew they were profiting from child labor and have shirked their promises."

Practices of this nature are, of course, not new. In 2019 The Washington Post  published a feature highlighting child labor infractions spanning some of the largest chocolate companies that exist today. In their feature writers Peter Whoriskey and Rachel Siegel interview a young man named Abou Traore as he works harvesting cocoa on an Ivory Coast farm. They ask him his age and are first told "nineteen," but when Traore feels that it's safe he writes in the sand "15."

Traore, and the four other boys and young men working the same field, traveled from the West African nation of Burkina Faso to the Ivory Coast looking for better lives. 

"I came here to go to school," Abou said to The Washington Post for their feature. "I haven't been to school for five years now."

According to the Mondelēz International " fact sheet " found in the asset library of their website's media section, their products are available in over 150 countries in the world. As is such, their labor practices have variants. In 1988, Hershey purchased Cadbury's U.S. chocolate business and according to the International Labor Rights Forum  "while Cadbury has demonstrated its commitment to ending forced child labor in the West African cocoa industry by selling Fair Trade certified chocolates in the UK, Canada, Ireland, Japan, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand—the same cannot be said of Cadbury products sold in the United States."

Read more :

• Vaccine refusal is child abuse   
• Following wins by other food industry unions, 50,000 California grocery workers authorize a strike  
• We aren't only facing a supply chain issue — for grocery workers, it's also a labor rights issue

Kelly McClure is Salon's Nights and Weekends Editor covering daily news, politics and culture. Her work has been featured in Vulture, The A.V. Club, Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan, Nylon, Vice, and elsewhere. She is the author of Something is Always Happening Somewhere .

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Cadbury faces fresh accusations of child labour on cocoa farms in ghana.

The food giant that owns the  Cadbury  brand is embroiled in fresh allegations of employing child labour after an investigation obtained footage of children working with machetes on cocoa farms in its supply chain, the Guardian has reported.

According to the UK website, Children as young as 10 have allegedly been found working in Ghana to harvest cocoa pods to supply Mondelēz International, which owns Cadbury. Campaigners say the farmers are being paid less than £2 a day and can’t afford to hire adult workers.

The  Channel 4   Dispatches  investigation, broadcast comes more than two decades after the chocolate industry pledged to eliminate child labour.

Ayn Riggs, founder of Slave Free Chocolate, which campaigns against  child labour in cocoa farms , said: “It’s horrifying to see these children using these long machetes, which are sometimes half their height. Chocolate companies promised to clean this up over 20 years ago. They knew they were profiting from child labour and have shirked their promises.”

The Cadbury revelations come as this weekend  millions of pounds will be spent on chocolate treats  for Easter. More than £300m is spent on Easter eggs and novelties each year, including more than 80m boxed eggs. The chocolate market is worth £5.6bn in the UK, according to the market research firm Mintel. It includes about 330m Cadbury Creme eggs which are eaten every year.

Mondelēz, which made global profits last year of more than £3.3bn, has a sustainability programme, Cocoa Life. Its logo is marked on its products, including Cadbury Dairy Milk, and its website states: “No amount of child labour in the cocoa supply chain should be acceptable.”

Under the Cocoa Life programme, Mondelēz had, by the end of 2020, mapped about 167,800 cocoa farms that supply its businesses in  Ghana , Côte d’Ivoire, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic and Brazil.

On one of the farms alleged to be supplying Mondelēz, two children with machetes were filmed by the documentary team weeding the plantations. Children were also filmed using sharp knives to open cocoa pods and swinging long sticks with blades tied to them to harvest the pods from the cocoa trees. None of the children were wearing protective clothing. The daughter of one farmer, who claimed to be supplying Mondelēz, said she had sliced her foot open while using a long machete.

On one of the smallholdings, a niece of the farmer said she thought she was going to her uncle’s farm to help with childcare but claims she was being forced to work long hours on the farm and not allowed to go to school. When asked why she did not speak out, she said she was “afraid”.

Under Ghanaian law, it is illegal for children under 13 to work on cocoa farms. There is also a ban on anyone under 18 being involved in hazardous labour.

Ghana is the world’s second-biggest cocoa producer after Côte d’Ivoire, and the crop, along with gold, is one of its most valuable exports. A cocoa farmer will typically receive 7p from a milk chocolate bar costing £1 in the UK, and 11p from a dark chocolate bar.

It means many live in extreme poverty while facing rising costs from the impacts of climate change, because of unpredictable weather patterns and changes in crop-threatening pests and diseases. Ninety percent of the world’s cocoa beans are harvested on small, family farms with less than two hectares of land.

In 2001, a cocoa industry agreement agreed to eliminate child labour. It was backed by the World Cocoa Foundation, a trade group whose members include the world’s biggest cocoa and chocolate companies, Nestlé, Mars Wrigley and Mondelēz.

But the protocol’s targets were postponed and adjusted in 2005 and 2008. A revised target in 2010, to reduce the worst forms of child labour in the cocoa sector in West Africa by 70% by 2020, has been missed. Campaigners say child labour is still endemic in the chocolate industry.

A study by the social research group NORC at the University of Chicago in 2020 found that 1.56 million children were involved in the cocoa industry in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire.

The report found prevalence rate of child labour in cocoa production among agricultural households in cocoa-growing areas of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana increased between 2008/09 and 2018/19. There was a 62 per cent increase in cocoa production in the two countries during this period.

Joanna Ewart-James, executive director of Freedom United, an international organisation campaigning against child labour in the cocoa supply chain, said: “Child slavery and child labour have plagued the industry in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana – which produce 60% of the world’s cocoa – for decades. Cocoa farmers are not earning an income that enables them to recruit the labour they need.”

On Friday, Freedom United will publish a scorecard rating global chocolate firms on their labour and environmental practices. The campaign group says Mondelēz has invested in community initiatives to combat child labour but, along with other leading companies, needs to pay farmers more money for its cocoa.

Slave Free  Chocolate  compiles a list of chocolate companies that use ethically grown chocolate.

Martin Short, president of the World Cocoa Foundation, said: “Dealing with child labour abuses as a standalone issue will never work until we deal with the root cause of child labour, which is farmer poverty.”

Cadbury, one of Britain’s most famous companies, was controversially  taken over by the US food firm Kraft Foods  in January 2010. The American food giant changed its name to Mondelēz International in October 2012.

Mondelēz considers a wide range of measures are required to combat child labour. The company has been involved in research that shows that increasing the price of cocoa will not on its own lift many farmers out of poverty, because they are farming on small amounts of land.

A Mondelēz International spokesperson said: “We’re deeply concerned by the incidents documented in the  Dispatches  programme. We explicitly prohibit child labour in our operations and have been working relentlessly to take a stand against this, making significant efforts through our Cocoa Life programme to improve the protection of children in the communities where we source cocoa, including in Ghana.

“The welfare of the children and families featured is our primary concern and we commit to investigating further so we can provide any support needed. As part of our Cocoa Life programme, we have child labour monitoring and remediation systems in place in Ghana, which means community members and NGO partners are trained to provide assistance to vulnerable children, and once identified, we can help to address any cases of child labour.” The company said it had requested additional information from the  Dispatches  team so it could investigate.

Related to this story

• 58% increment in cocoa farmgate price an insult; give us our money – Cocoa farmers to COCOBOD
• Ghana increases cocoa farmgate price by 58% to GH¢33,120
• Mahama proposes new legislation to halt illegal mining activities on cocoa farms
• Solidaridad and Department of Co-operatives collaborate to empower cocoa farmers in Ghana
• 3 persons shot following clash between COCOBOD taskforce and farmers at Ahamanso Junction
• Rainforest Alliance and partners intensify fight against forced and child labour in cocoa, mining areas
• Cocoa farmers lose interest in cultivating the crop due to effect of climate change
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Child labour exposé in Ghana piles pressure on Cadbury

Cadbury faces claims that it is profiting from child labour after reports that children as young as ten have been working on cocoa farms that supply the confectioner.

An investigation concluded that children in Ghana who ought to have been in school were performing illegal work with machetes and knives. The farms belong to Cadbury’s Cocoa Life programme, which is partly aimed at eradicating child labour from its supply chain.

The alleged use of child labour was uncovered by Channel 4’s Dispatches programme. Posing as climate change researchers, reporters were told that children were being removed from their families and stopped from going to school in order to work on cocoa farms. Workers on the Cocoa Life farms said they were earning less than £2

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