More Than Cute Little Kids in Costumes

Grist:

About half of the chocolate eaten in the U.S. comes from the Ivory Coast, where documented instances of forced child labor on cocoa farms persist despite a decade of pressure on chocolate companies to implement better oversight. And because corporations like Hershey's (which has recently been found to be exploiting workers here in the U.S., too) and Cadbury manufacture their products using beans from all over the world that get mixed together, it's highly likely that any chocolate bar you unwrap is made with at least some cacao grown by underage workers with little in the way of rights or compensation.

The U.S. State Department estimated that over 100,000 children work on Ivory Coast cocoa farms, and 10,000 of those could be victims of trafficking or enslavement, said Kelsie Evans, chocolate products coordinator for Equal Exchange, a fair trade co-op. A Knight-Ridder investigation in 2001 first gave the issue wide exposure, portraying the lives of boys as young as nine, who perform the backbreaking work of harvesting cocoa beans, while receiving beatings, inadequate meals, and little or no pay in return.