Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation
Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana: CBS News investigation
Children in Ghana, some as young as 5, are working cocoa fields and wielding machetes instead of attending school.
There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In the blistering heat, CBS News found children in Ghana as young as 5 years old using machetes nearly as big as themselves to harvest the cocoa beans that end up in some of America's most-loved chocolates.
Our team traveled across Ghana's remote cocoa belt to visit small subsistence farms that supply the U.S. chocolate giant Mars, which produces candies including M&Ms and Snickers.
We found children working at each one of the farms — despite the company's vow to have systems in place to eradicate child labor in its supply chain by 2025.
An employee at the warehouse, who is not being named by CBS News, said child labor was "an offense" in the country, but he could not guarantee all the cocoa handled at the facility was produced without it.
Terry Collingsworth, a human rights lawyer in the U.S., has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit alleging consumer fraud against American chocolate companies including Mars.
CBS News witnessed one child nearly lose his fingers to a machete blade while hacking open cocoa pods.
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Just as white Jesus intended.
Why are people surprised? This and far worse has always been a part of the cocoa trade
Why do certain users try to steer discussion off lemmy?
There's no reason to do so.
The reality is that without development small farmers need the whole family to help & simply forcing them not to with out any assistance to offset the loss in labor is going to lead to bad consequences like children being abandoned or worse.