I’ve been covering issues related to the production of chocolate through the use of child slave labor for a few years now. In all of that time, I didn’t really have a moment to really feel like anyone was listening inside the walls of Congress. Today, however, Congress doesn’t have to act on this, the Department of Labor has and the tone is set in the opening paragraph to their List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor report:

As a nation and as members of the global community, we reject the proposition that it is acceptable to pursue economic gain through the forced labor of other human beings or the exploitation of children in the workplace. However, we are aware that these problems remain widespread in today’s global economy. Indeed, we face these problems in our own country. The International Labor Organization estimates that over 12 million persons worldwide are working in some form of forced labor or bondage and that more than 200 million children are at work, many in hazardous forms of labor. The most vulnerable persons – including women, indigenous groups, and migrants – are the most likely to fall into these exploitive situations and the current global economic crisis has only exacerbated their vulnerability.

What’s hardest to conceive of in the issues surrounding child slave labor in chocolate production is really how easy it could be to fix. Let’s start with the world’s major producer, Côte d’Ivoire. Did you know that Cote d'Ivoire produces about 40% of the world supply of cocoa, and this cocoa comes from about 600,000 total farms in this very small West African country.

The 600,000 producers are often very small farms where children are forced to work to help their families or are sold to larger farms. From the New Internationalist

The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) has made many visits to Côte d’Ivoire and it has never met a single parent who would not have preferred their child to go to school, get an education, and have a better future. The problem is that many parents have no choice: there are simply no schools, no teachers and no books. Their children have to work because these cocoa farmers do not receive a fair price for their beans and as a result, live in poverty. And a recent study by the Payson Centre at Tulane University has shown that, despite millions of dollars and many years, the chocolate companies’ charitable efforts are not having a broad impact on improving the lives of children on cocoa farms.

The problem of child slavery in chocolate production comes from control of revenues, revenues which were used to fund a civil war. I’m sure everyone knows the “Golden Rule”, He who has the Gold makes the Rules? Well, that’s the case in Côte d’Ivoire. It's a horrendous situation for thousands of children. This is a very real problem caused by poverty and war and held in place by greed and abuse:

An investigative report by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) in 2000 indicated the size of the problem. According to the BBC, hundreds of thousands of children are being purchased from their parents for a pittance, or in some cases outright stolen, and then shipped to the Ivory Coast, where they are sold as slaves to cocoa farms. These children typically come from countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Togo. Destitute parents in these poverty-stricken lands sell their children to traffickers believing that they will find honest work once they arrive in Ivory Coast and then send some of their earnings home. But that's not what happens. These children, usually 12-to-14-years-old but sometimes younger, are forced to do hard manual labor 80 to 100 hours a week. They are paid nothing, are barely fed, are beaten regularly, and are often viciously beaten if they try to escape. Most will never see their families again.

Today, I’m thrilled that the US Department of Labor has listed cocoa production in their report. What I was a bit disturbed by, was my utter lack of knowledge of other child slave produced products like Electronics, Fireworks, garments and textiles from China; Coal from Pakistan; Shrimp from Thailand; and how often child slave labor is associated with clothing from the harvesting of cotton to the production of the garment in countries as divergent as Argentina, India and Uzbekistan.

We have a long way to go to end forced labor all over the world. I think a good first step is for Congress and the President to no longer agree to more Favored Nation status’ or Free Trade Agreements with countries that can’t do the bare minimum for the most vulnerable in society. These products and their raw materials shouldn’t even be on the market and should never reach the shelves at our local stores. Best way to stop it, is to start with Trade, and that’s up to the Politicians we elect. I mean, they do work for us, don’t they?

The next thing we can all do, is to take a step back, put down the coffee and cocoa and check the labels on our clothes and other textiles. If they’re made in a country on this list or the cotton comes from one of these countries, look elsewhere. Look toward local chocolatiers for that chocolate fix (list available in link of a few chocolaty suggestions) and find ways to recycle clothes from the Good Will or a local thrift store that supports causes you do. Look for the union made label, you’ll get a great item and know that it was not child slave labor produced.

And one last thing, let folks know what you’re doing. Let them know that you don’t support child slave labor and that’s why you’re not buying chocolates right now. It’s your way of sending a message to companies like Cargill, companies that just don’t care who produces the materials they trade:

It admitted, in its public response to an ILRF action last year, that it did not have sufficient ‘market incentive’ to eliminate slavery from its supply chain. Consumers can avoid eating chocolate by one company or another. However, as Cargill is selling to all of them, can you be sure your chocolate did not go through Cargill’s hands?

It’s really time these companies looked at children and saw something other than Market Incentives, it’s time they actually see in children what they are, our future.

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Remember those bad tomatoes? Remember those vile little red demons, just waiting to make you sick with salmonella?

Well, wait no longer, they weren’t the culprit. Nope, it was peppers from Mexico.

A strain of the salmonella bacteria that sickened more than 1,300 people has been found in a serrano pepper and a sample of irrigation water at a farm in Mexico, U.S. health officials said Wednesday.They called the discovery a "breakthrough" but cautioned that tomatoes may still be a culprit in the nearly four-month outbreak that has alarmed consumers and cost the domestic produce industry hundreds of millions of dollars

It’s funny how there’s a “smoking gun” and still, “don’t eat tomatoes” keeps popping up.

But in all of this, what I think we have is a big fat thank you to Free Trade! Yeah for Free Trade! It’s brought us cheaper products, fruits, vegetables and now even a pilot product of truck drivers from Mexico (PS, they don’t have anti-lock brakes nor are they required to rest).

How about a little more from the LA Times story:

The rare Salmonella Saintpaul strain was found at a farm in Nuevo Leon state in northeastern Mexico, said David Acheson, food safety chief for the Food and Drug Administration. The farm grows serrano and jalapeno peppers but not tomatoes, he said.Contaminated water is a common launchpad for salmonella, experts said. Fecal matter can seep or be washed into wells, canals and other untreated water sources used to irrigate crops, said Douglas Powell, scientific director of the International Food Safety Network at Kansas State University.

I especially love the reference to FECAL matter. It just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, okay, and a little pukey, too.

While the tomato scare was all over the news for weeks and stores all over the place were pulling tomatoes, many of us were left wondering WTF? I know when I went to get a burger, no tomatoes. When I ordered a salad, no tomatoes, even the cute little cherry and grape tomatoes (which were never suspected) were taken away. And the warnings were issued before testing found any contamination from tomatoes. Again from the LATimes:

No tomatoes have tested positive for the strain.On Wednesday, lawmakers pressed King and Acheson about the slow pace of the investigation, traceability standards and conflicting messages about what was safe to eat.In early June, the FDA issued a warning against three types of tomatoes, leading some retailers to pull all tomatoes from their produce bins. The advisory was lifted in mid-July -- not because tomatoes were in the clear but because any affected fruit would have spoiled by then.A week later, the agency said that only jalapeno peppers from Mexico were linked to the outbreak. The FDA is now telling consumers that domestic tomatoes and peppers are in the clear, while fresh jalapeno and serrano peppers from Mexico should be avoided.

I think the real culprit here is the extent to which our food supply is not locally based. It’s difficult to find locally grown fruits and vegetables. I tend to pick things up from farmers markets because the items are more often produced by local farmers instead of huge conglomerates. I’d prefer to have the option of joining a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) group where a group of residents band together to purchase direct from a local farm. CSA’s give you a choice in terms of perishable foods that don’t always exist in local food supply chains.

But as much as I love the idea of a CSA and have actively looked for one to join, I’m still drawn to the farmer whose produce I can look through and pick and choose. I suppose it’s all about choices, huh?

Family farmers are rare these days.

Kids I grew up with who were farmers didn’t continue in the family tradition. The pig farmers, corn and hay farmers the kids who took time out of school to harvest winter wheat in the spring and the kids who lived on the strawberry farms (like my mother had) are a thing of the past.

Today, we talk about industries as if all tomato farmers have banded together or worse, are equal to Steel producers or textile mills. When it comes to food, these groups are vastly unequal because what we put in our bodies is way more important and affects way more people than does the production of eye bolts, zippers or blankets.

But, then again, it’s not like this hasn’t come up before (from the Washington Post )

This isn't the first time produce growers looked to Congress for help with a food-safety issue.

Even though the 2006 bagged spinach recall involving Dole Food and Natural Selection Foods was more contained, growers took a $100 million hit, according to the United Fresh Produce Association.

Spinach growers got a financial-aid provision part way through Congress but didn't succeed.

In March 1989, the U.S. banned the entry of seedless grapes from Chile after two grapes were found to have been contaminated with cyanide, leaving Chilean growers, exporters and importers with millions of dollars in losses. The industry tried to recover about $210 million only to get word four years later that a federal judge ruled that the FDA wasn't responsible because it was doing its job.

It’s happened before, the poisoning of our food. So, when the issue of tomatoes came up, I didn’t stop eating tomatoes. I just shopped more for tomatoes grown on family farms and sold at the local farmers markets. That’s why when I heard about the peppers from Mexico, I thought about the tomato farmers who pay a living wage to their pickers and I wondered if the farmers suffered losses like those reported in the LA Times and like the information below from the Washington Post:

But before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration lifted the tomato advisory July 17, U.S. tomato growers were left holding the shopping bag.
Growers said they lost $100 million in sales during the investigation, which they charge was conducted poorly and without enough consultation with them.

I wondered if growers (large and small) suffered losses like this, well, what happened to their pickers? If the workers can’t work on these farms due to losses like this from an issue related to imported food, do we also run the risk down the road of driving our own farmers out of business and a need for greater importation of food?

In the end, I think the Post got it right with this one:

The late reprieve for the industry shows how difficult it is to conduct international investigations of food-borne illnesses with limited resources and imperfect ways to trace a product back to its source.

This is what Free Trade has gotten us, a lot of rotten tomatoes here and imported peppers that will simply make you sick. Fabulous, huh?

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So, I have been at a work event all week and unable to read anything much less post. So, today, for lunch, I decided I'd troll the tubes and re-educate myself, and that's when I ran across a posting on Dailykos:

There, in this street theater production, the puppet attempted to confront corporate lobbyists, CEOs and Bush administration officials meeting at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. "Toxic Trader" wanted to eliminate trade barriers and implement voluntary standards for safety instead of instituting government inspections for consumer protection against unsafe imports. But union supporters dressed as the red-caped "Toxic Avengers," saved the day.

Later, steelworkers also dropped a huge banner inside the hotel as the Import Safety Summit completed, announcing to the participants “Unfair Trade Kills.” These victims have included a four-year-old boy who died after swallowing a lead pendant that came on his shoe, 81 patients who succumbed after using contaminated heparin blood thinner imported from Chinese manufacturers, and two Philadelphia carpenters who died in a car crash caused by defective imported tires.

These deaths are detailed in a report issued yesterday called “The Toxic Truth: Unfair Trade Kills,” available at http://usw.org.

Damn, wish I'd been there. And right now, I'm really wishing I had links to pictures of this to post!!

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I got an e-mail from my old local in Cleveland (I’m on the mailing list). They were sending us info from FLEXNEWS

Hershey announced a 3-year restructuring plan on 15 February 2007 to save up to USD 190 million a year. The company said that, under the restructuring, 1,500 jobs could be cut.

The company intends to transfer Reading production activities (York Peppermint Patties and 5th Avenue bars) to Monterrey, Mexico, before the end of 2008.

According to Teamsters’ General President Jim Hoffa, the Hershey plant move to Mexico shows how trade deals like NAFTA harm American workers. He said that about 260 workers at the plant will lose their jobs.

“These so-called trade deals are killing American jobs … They aren’t about trade, they’re about helping companies move their factories to countries with cheaper labor”, said Hoffa in a recent statement.

I’m not sure if Flexnews missed some of the point of the move or if it was IBT. Like the info I’ve posted on Kongsberg, these companies aren’t only moving for labor costs, they move for lower environmental standards and a lower tax rate for the company. They move for fewer regulatory requirements and because they don’t have to provide benefits (or fewer) to their employees. They move because they can work folks longer and not pay them more. They move because we have Free Trade agreements that gut our entire system of providing for workers, the environment, government services, and goodness knows what else.

I actually don’t buy Hershey’s because they insist on using cocoa harvested using slave labor in West Africa, specifically children in Côte d'Ivoire. This is just one more reason to continue to boycott Hershey’s, for using slave labor abroad and turning their employees out on the street here.

All in all, this is what Free Trade gets us. So, not only how does this benefit us, but explain to me how more pollution, low pay and few if any benefits actually is in the best interest of Mexico or in Kongsberg’s case, Poland?

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