The dark side of chocolate

Interview by Michael Turtle, The World Today, ABC, National, 4 April 2008

LISA MILLAR: It's the dark side of chocolate.

Every day thousands of Australians enjoy the sweet taste of a chocolate bar. But it's 'bittersweet' - according to World Vision Australia.

It's launching a campaign to highlight what it says, are the thousands of children in Africa working as slaves to make the chocolate. And it's targeting chocolate lovers, hoping they can pressure the manufacturers to make their supply chains more ethical.

Youth affairs reporter, Michael Turtle.

MICHAEL TURTLE: In the west African country of Ivory Coast, more than 600-thousand children are working on cocoa fields.

It's a region that produces about 70 per cent of the world's cocoa. But it's also one of the world's poorest regions, with little workforce regulation. And the majority of those children are working in slave-like conditions.

TIM COSTELLO: We enjoy the great indulgence of chocolate at much cheaper prices because of their forced labour and sweat.

MICHAEL TURTLE: The chief executive of World Vision Australia, Tim Costello, has just returned from a trip to Ivory Coast and Ghana.

He was there to investigate child exploitation in the chocolate industry - and what he found was shocking.

TIM COSTELLO: These are the most basic villages you will ever see - where children are using machetes, being exposed to chemical sprays and getting burns on their skin and in their eyes.

MICHAEL TURTLE: And with the exploitation, comes trafficking.

It's estimated about 12,000 of the children working in the cocoa fields in west Africa have been smuggled in and sold.

David Batstone is the author of a book on child slavery: 'Not for Sale', and he's joined World Vision's campaign, because he too has seen the problem in Africa.

DAVID BATSTONE: If the child would want to leave, say 'this is no fun, this isn't playing, I want to go do something else', which most children are like... they are beaten, chained in some circumstances to a place where they'll sleep that night, in the morning they'll be unlocked and thrown out in the field.

MICHAEL TURTLE: As part of World Vision's campaign, the charity is calling on Australian customers to pressure the big chocolate manufacturers to reassess their supply chains.

Mr Costello says consumers do have a choice and should be buying ethical chocolate.

TIM COSTELLO: We feel guilty about chocolate at the best of times, then we really should feel appropriate guilt not just a neurotic guilt about our waistlines.

The prospect that there literally might be blood on our teeth because of forced labour trafficked kids, so we can have cheaper chocolate bars is something that's appropriate guilt.

MICHAEL TURTLE: But the chocolate industry in Australia says it and World Vision are on the same page.

The chief executive officer of the Confectionery Manufacturers of Australasia, Trish Hyde, says the problem in west Africa is real, but she says it's being addressed.

The global industry is currently going through as process of certification to try to identify where child exploitation is occurring.

TRISH HYDE: We're actually going into communities, finding out what is actually occurring on the ground, what labour practices children are involved in - are they in harmful situations - and then putting in the remedies that are needed, going back and checking, have these remedies worked.

She says by July this year, half of cocoa fields will have been through that process.

The industry missed the last deadline like that it set in 2005 but Ms Hyde says that was because of problems like a civil war and local government support

LISA MILLAR: Michael Turtle reporting.

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