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Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

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Re: Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

#71

Post by gruez »

abeppu wrote: post #52

This article is about Mars. But in 2021, Nestle and Cargill were involved in a Supreme Court case, where it was decided that the Alien Torts act could not used to bring suit by plaintiff who allege they were child slaves, trafficked from Mali to the Ivory Coast, forced to work, beaten, threatened, and not paid. The legal argument was not "we don't have child slave labor in our supply chain, even in areas where we are…

>My belief now is that most cocoa from the large, cheap sources is not produced with ethical labor.

Your comment unhelpfully frames the issue as a dichotomy between "100% ethical labor" and "everything else", where "everything else" could mean anywhere between 0.01% unethical labor to 100% unethical labor. As a chocolate maker that's inevitably going to have unethical labor in the supply chain, the best legal strategy is to head off all claims by establishing a precedent that you're not responsible, rather than trying to quash each individual accusation of unethical labor.

Re: Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

#73

Post by Broken_Hippo »

goldenshale wrote: post #56

Wait, you mean kids in developing countries work in order to help their families survive poverty. Oh my word, we should stop buying chocolate. Or wait, then nobody is making any money. Seriously, haven't we learned from the "Chinese sweatshop" hysteria throughout the 2000s that if people want to work they are often digging themselves out of a whole rather than being forced into one?

Somehow, you think that a child is digging themselves out of a hole and that working instead of schooling is not them being forced into one?

Re: Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

#74

Post by dumpsterlid »

autoexec wrote: post #29
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

> Munira, 15, is one of those children. She has worked in the cocoa fields since she was 5 years old. Education is a luxury, with her school an hour-long walk away and transportation options expensive. Last year, her family harvested only one bag of decent-quality cocoa. A 140-pound bag of the product fetches only about $115. I think child labor is actually a symptom of a deeper problem and cracking down on child lab…

This is exactly the same argument that was often used to justify slavery in the US and after all these years it's still not compelling. Ending slavery in the US didn't "lead to worse problems", it was a massive improvement. People who are free may thrive or struggle, but they'll do it without a master which is always an improvement. There are no solutions to those deeper problems that impact people in poverty which w…

This really is the most salient point in this entire thread, there are piles of people commenting about this article with literally the same argument that was used to try to kick the can about ending slavery down the road.

Re: Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

#76

Post by otikik »

tdb7893 wrote: post #27
User23 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Child labor is still not uncommon in agricultural communities in the USA. I believe the federal law is age 12 and up for farm work. And de facto if not de jure there is no age limit on children working their own family’s farm. Granted one might call that chores rather than labor. And the minimum age to babysit is as low as 8 based on a quick search.

It depends what you mean by child labor. My experience is that the children help on the farm but for the most part do school full time until at least their latter teenage years. It's pretty different than the child labor in the article.

I recommend you watch John Oliver’s episode linked above. It is just as bad.

Re: Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

#77

Post by gruez »

throwboatyface wrote: post #66
goldenshale wrote: post #56

Wait, you mean kids in developing countries work in order to help their families survive poverty. Oh my word, we should stop buying chocolate. Or wait, then nobody is making any money. Seriously, haven't we learned from the "Chinese sweatshop" hysteria throughout the 2000s that if people want to work they are often digging themselves out of a whole rather than being forced into one?

What if we, I don't know, did something to fix the poverty?

Easier said than done.

Re: Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

#78

Post by AndrewKemendo »

1oooqooq wrote: post #18
bell-cot wrote: post #3

> Munira, 15, is one of those children. [...] Last year, her family harvested only one bag of decent-quality cocoa. A 140-pound bag of the product fetches only about $115. Sounds like "child labor" is downstream of the actual problem.

Are you suggesting the workers unite and take over the means of production, comrade bell-cot?

Seems like a good idea

Re: Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

#79

Post by zyxin »

mopsi wrote: post #43
janice1999 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me a bleeding heart but child labor is an 'actual' problem. You can keep destructing societal issues until you reinvent the universe from scratch. It may be difficult to solve global poverty but it's not a lot to ask extremely profitable companies to enforce the supply chain checks they've committed to.

In Europe and the US, it wasn't too long ago either when families could only afford to send some of their children to school. Others had to work from a very early age to support the family. If you ban child labor without offering anything to supplement the lost income, then you're just harming them more. I think it would be better to frame the issue as why so little of the profit made from their work reaches them. It…

Is this an issue with the price of sugar? From the video, it seems like they have already fermented the beans, turning it into some basic dark chocolate after that shouldn't be too hard especially if you're not after a smooth texture.

Re: Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation

#80

Post by akira2501 »

benj111 wrote: post #7
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

> Munira, 15, is one of those children. She has worked in the cocoa fields since she was 5 years old. Education is a luxury, with her school an hour-long walk away and transportation options expensive. Last year, her family harvested only one bag of decent-quality cocoa. A 140-pound bag of the product fetches only about $115. I think child labor is actually a symptom of a deeper problem and cracking down on child lab…

150 years ago child labour in the West was common. If you can barely afford food then everyone needs to work to earn money. I'm kind of in two minds, from their point of view there's probably nothing wrong, but that's incompatible with our morals. But then we obviously aren't willing to pay for those morals.

Child labor was only outlawed in the 1930s. The exception that still stands today is farm labor. Many states will even let you get a restricted drivers license as early as 15 if you work on a farm.

Also, ` They gave her a backpack and schoolbooks with the slogan "I am a child, I play, I go to school."' is one of the most neo-colonial statements I've read in a long time.

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