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Bitterness in the Chocolate Industry's Child Slave Labor
Contributed by Shoshana Rice

  • TOP HAGGADAHS FOR 2023

"Child Labor & Slavery in the Chocolate Industry" on 2021 Food Empowerment Project

Most of the children laboring on cocoa farms are between the ages of 12 and 16,[15] but reporters have found children as young as 5.[16][19] 

A child’s workday typically begins at six in the morning and ends in the evening.[18] Some of the children use chainsaws to clear the forests.[17] Other children climb the cocoa trees to cut bean pods using a machete. These large, heavy, dangerous knives are the standard tools for children on the cocoa farms,[18] which violates international labor laws and a UN convention on eliminating the worst forms of child labor.[24][32] Once they cut the bean pods from the trees, the children pack the pods into sacks that weigh more than 100 pounds when full and drag them through the forest [17] Aly Diabate, a former cocoa slave, said, “Some of the bags were taller than me. It took two people to put the bag on my head. And when you didn’t hurry, you were beaten.”[4]

Holding a single large pod in one hand, each child has to strike the pod with a machete and pry it open with the tip of the blade to expose the cocoa beans.[18] Every strike of the machete has the potential to slice a child’s flesh. The majority of children have scars on their hands, arms, legs or shoulders from the machetes.
haggadah Section: Maror
Source: Food Empowerment Project

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