Chocolate!
This was supposed to be a positive story for Snapshots. About some of the work I do, and the diversity of products I load in my trailer and how much ‘fun’ it is to load computers, machinery, paper, and all that stuff because every product has its own requirements of handling.
I also load cacao beans. In fact, two weeks ago I loaded at our clients’ place a mere 25.000 kg beans of cacao and drove them to a factory in France (no, I do not mention names for a whole bunch of reasons. Take it or leave it.) where the beans are processed into chocolate.
This particular company, in Holland, receives piles and piles of bags with cacao beans. They re-pack it in so-called Bigbags ( which contain 1250 kg each). These bigbags are transported to several chocolate-producing factories in Europe.
So far, so good… Until I just learned from a lady dear to me, that cacao beholds child labour…
I feel a bit naive in all honesty. I really thought that was more or less taken care of…by all kinds of programmes from several ngo’s.
So I did some searching; ( no, that wasn’t thorough. Just a glimpse of it was more than enough to me to make my stomach twist.).
We, the Dutch, hold a harbour that imports and exports a mere 500.000 metric tonnes ( yes, that is indeed 500.000.000 kg!)on a yearly basis, of cacaobeans. That is almost half of the world market. Some of which you just saw.
According to Unicef, 1,4 million children are working in child labour, 150.000 of them in the cacao industry. They work, as reported, up to 50 hours a week and don’t go to school. I must admit; it’s difficult for me to picture my daughter working 50 hours a week to make ends meet…
Apparently a lot of good work has been done, local people are getting educated, a lot of the children go to school, prices are raised to benefit local farmers and so on…
But it’s not good enough. Not by far! A bar of chocolate in your, or my, grocery store is still far too cheap. And that comes with a high price! It all comes down to money.
Being naive on the subject struck me, because it appears I hold a position in a chain that is directly connected to child labour. And I think it would be too far stretched to say that I’m personally responsible for child labour, but yes; I am a part of it…
Sometimes life would be easier if one was unaware…
The provided links are in Dutch. Full translation would be useless on this page, I reckon. I’ve been trying to find English versions, but I’m sure you all know your way around on the Internet.
