Child Labor: The Truth About Chocolate is Not so Sweet

The United States is the world's largest chocolate consumer, eating more than thirteen billion dollars worth of chocolate each year. Unfortunately, while large companies enjoy the massive profits, cacao farmers in the West African nation of the Ivory Coast, where forty percent of the entire world’s cocoa is produced, unjustly make a mere five percent of those profits. According to a fact sheet from TransFairUSA, the income for a small cocoa farm in the Ivory Coast ranges from a meager thirty to one hundred-and-ten dollars a year. These farmers are so poor that they have no choice but to resort to using child labor and in some cases, child slavery. An article from Democracy Now reports that “these child workers labor for long, punishing hours, using dangerous tools and facing frequent exposure to dangerous pesticides as they travel great distances in the grueling heat. Those who labor as slaves must also suffer frequent beatings and other cruel treatment.” This week I decided to join the discussion in two other blogs in hope of bringing more attention to this very important issue. My comments can be found here at Boycott Nestlé and here at Blogher.

Boycott Nestlé
Nestlé is the largest chocolate corporation in the world with over sixty-five billion dollars in annual sales. For this very reason it is absolutely deplorable that they do not currently engage in the Fair Trade of cocoa. I definitely agree with your statement: “for several years Nestlé has been claiming that social certification of its cocoa production is impossible. Yet, social certification exists for cocoa: it's called Fair Trade. Why can't Nestlé make a commitment to convert to Fair Trade?” They must be held accountable for their human rights violations and be pressured to convert to Fair Trade. This would guarantee a modest minimum price per pound of cocoa, an amount that Nestlé could definitely afford to pay, thus providing a fair pay to small farmers and an end to the practice of child labor and child slavery. Currently, as The International Labor Organization states, about a quarter of a million children between the ages of nine and twelve are working in these farms. For now, until Nestle takes responsibility for its cocoa supply chain I will only buy chocolate that has been Fair Trade Certified™

Blogher
Thank you for bringing some much needed attention to this little known issue. Unfortunately, M&Ms/Mars Inc. is not the only corporation buying from contractors that utilize child labor and child slavery at their cocoa farms on the Ivory Coast. Hershey’s and Nestlé are also engaged in this practice. It is unacceptable that these multi-billion dollar corporations do not currently take part in Fair Trade. The cocoa farmers are only making an average of about seventy dollars, annually! How are they supposed to survive this way? This is the reason why the children of the Ivory Coast are forced to spend their entire childhoods picking cocoa. I do not think that boycotting these corporations is too harsh. I am afraid that it may be the only way to get their attention. By buying products that are not Fair Trade certified we are supporting the exploitation of thousands and thousands of poor farmers and children. If consumers increase their demand for Fair Trade chocolate, the corporations will have no choice but to change their practices.

Global Warming: Polar Bears in the Artic are in Danger of Extinction

Global warming if ignored will directly affect the lives of every single organism on the planet. One of the first to be gravely affected is the polar bear. Polar bears are a migratory species that spend their summers on northern coastal regions before heading out onto the sea ice each fall to hunt for seals. Ice and snow are essential to polar bear's way of life. Unfortunately, due to global warming, rising arctic temperatures are reducing the amount of sea ice that polar bears depend on for hunting and many are dying. The problem is mainly due to the melting ice because the distance between land and the sea ice that they hunt on is getting further and further apart. The Wall Street Journal reported that “in September 2004, the polar ice cap retracted a record 160 miles north of the northern coast of Alaska, researchers counted 10 polar bears swimming as far as 60 miles offshore. Polar bears can swim long distances but have evolved to mainly swim between sheets of ice.” The picture to the right shows a polar bear standing on the melting ice. The vanishing ice is particularly hard on the breeding females because they must feed both themselves and their cubs. Greenpeace USA reports that in some areas, polar bear birth rates have dropped by up to 15% in the last decade, and the bears show increasing signs of undernourishment.

Polar bears could disappear in our lifetime if we do not take action. The Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Greenpeace filed a lawsuit under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in December of 2006; just one day after scientists released a study that reports that polar bears are drowning after swimming long distances in the ocean between the melting of the Arctic ice. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service responded by announcing its intention to propose that the polar bear be listed as a "threatened" species under the ESA, however no actions have yet taken place. If the polar bear is officially listed in the “threatened” species list, it will be the first species added as a direct result of climate change and the federal agencies will be obligated to ensure that any action they authorize or fund will not jeopardize the polar bears' continued existence or harm its critical habitat.

The floating ice of the Arctic covers an area equal to that of the United States. It is absolutely crucial in the regulation of the Earth’s climate. When that ice melts we lose its “air-conditioning” capacity. Because snow and sea-ice are white, they are highly reflective. Most of the sun's energy comes down and is simply reflected back to space. But due to the retraction of the ice cover, less and less of the Earth’s surface is covered by this highly reflective snow and sea ice, and the dark sea that replaces the melted ice absorbs most of the sun's heat and accelerates the melting of the remaining ice. There is no doubt that the North Pole ice is melting; the picture to the left shows the clear, undeniable difference between the Artic Sea boundary in 1979 and the sea boundary today. The Artic ice cap is melting at an alarming rate. “The vast expanses of ice floating in the Arctic Sea are melting in winter as well as in the summer, likely because of global warming”, said Josefino Comiso, a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "This is the strongest evidence yet of global warming in the Arctic. If the ice continues to melt at the current rate, it could have profound effects on all life in the Arctic and other consequences around the world,” he added.

Currently the United States is the largest emitter of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide emissions from cars, trucks and power plants that cause global warming. BBC News reports that one hundred and twenty one nations have ratified the Kyoto treaty to reduce emissions. Unfortunately the United States, the world’s biggest polluter, has not joined. We can take action and begin to reduce global warming pollution now by promoting clean and efficient sources of energy and by supporting the above organizations in their fight. While the proposal to list the polar bear as “threatened” is an encouraging sign, polar bear survival will ultimately depend on the follow-through from all of us. Oregon Zoo conservation scientist David Shepherdson stated that the Arctic may be the most environmentally sensitive area in the world right now, but eventually, the effects of global warming will be felt worldwide. He said wildlife will be among the first casualties.

American Sweatshops: A Look Into the Situation in The Northern Mariana Islands

Although the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or CNMI, is a U.S. territory, it is excluded from the usual American labor and immigration laws and is not represented by the U.S. Congress; yet, according to an article in Ms Magazine, clothing sewn there is allowed to carry the "made in the USA" label. The CNMI’s garment manufacturers were clients of Jack Abramoff, the infamous lobbyist who, with the help of former House Majority leader Tom Delay, blocked all of the legislation that would have eliminated these exemptions. This has allowed garment manufacturers to import thousands of foreign female workers who work up to 20 hours a day in sweatshop conditions. The picture to the right shows a sweatshop in Saipan, one of the islands that comprise the CNMI. On February 8th the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a hearing on the labor and immigration conditions of the CNMI and, with the newly elected Democratic Congress, passed a proposal to increase the CNMI minimum wage to the federal level as part of the nationwide minimum wage increase legislation. This is a notable first step to improving the situation in the CNMI; however, it is not enough. The CNMI is a U.S. territory and it is unacceptable that these types of human rights violations have been allowed to remain for so long. This week I will join the discussion of this issue in two other blogs. The links can be found below along with my comments.


http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/02/08/mariana/index.html
Thank you for bringing attention to this issue. Sadly, because The Northern Mariana Islands are able to set their own immigration policies, women are being tricked into contracts of servitude in U.S. territory. I agree with you that raising the minimum wage is not going to solve everything but it is a positive first step. I am very pleased with the fact that under the new Democratic leadership in Congress, the labor and immigration reforms in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands are finally going somewhere. The Senate actually passed a bill federalizing the island's local laws six years ago but, as you know, special interest groups lobbied Tom Delay to stop the bill from becoming a law. For this reason it is critical that the CNMI be allowed a seat in Congress. Unfortunately they are currently not represented as Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands are. They need to have a say in the making of policies that affect them.



http://washingtonwoman.blogspot.com/2007/01/worn-in-usa.html
The U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources finally held a hearing on February 8 regarding the current situation in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The hearing focused on whether the CNMI should be brought under U.S. labor and immigration law enforcement jurisdiction. Fortunately labor reform in the CNMI is heading in the right direction. The proposal to increase the minimum wage to the federal level passed with ease as part of the nationwide minimum wage increase legislation. I truly hope that this is only the beginning of more good things to come. Unfortunately, a lot more still needs to be done. David B. Cohen, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Insular Affairs, said that “Federalizing the CNMI's immigration system needs to be done in a manner that would not cause needless economic or fiscal harm.” Fifty percent of the residents there are foreign employees and that fact must be taken into account when reforming the immigration laws. We certainly do not want to harm the individuals we intended to help. It must also be considered that the people there currently have no way to change policies that may be detrimental to them because they are not represented in the U.S. Congress. Consequently, they turn to hiring lobbyists, and as we have seen, lobbyists are not representing the interests of these people.

Dying for Fashion: Animal Suffering is Never in Style

In the past few years the international fur industry has waged an organized, well funded-PR campaign aimed at banishing the recent moral stigma attached to wearing fur. It has done so by mixing fur with silk, wool, suede and leather no longer limited to full-length mink coats or fox-fur jackets. The Humane Society of the United States reports that “many shoppers, who might flinch at buying a full-length fur coat, might still be seduced by a coat with a fur collar, or a scarf, or a handbag with fur detail. The animal connection may be less apparent with fur that has been dyed or combined with other materials.” According to the HSUS, in the last ten years, demand for fur, mostly from Europe and the United States, has increased dramatically. The success of the fur industry campaigns and these new manufacturing methods to make fur socially acceptable have almost imperceptibly brought fur back out onto the streets.

Eighty five percent of the world’s fur comes from fur farms. The Fur Free Alliance states that “each year, the fur industry kills over 50 million animals for fashion. In fact, the number of animals to make a single fur coat is as follows; 12-15 lynx, 10-15 wolves or coyotes, 60-80 minks, 27-30 raccoons, 10-12 beavers, 60-100 squirrels.” Consumers need to know that every fur coat, lining or piece of trim represents the intense suffering of animals. As a result of the rapid growth in fur farming, the absence of animal welfare protection and the surplus of cheap labor in China, the world’s largest fur exporter, Care for the Wild and Swiss Animal Protection (SAP) were prompted to collaborate on an investigation throughout 2004 and 2005. Fun Fur? A Report on the Chinese Fur Industry, exposes the horrors inflicted on animals at Chinese fur farms.

Investigators for the Fun Fur? report, obtained photos and video at fur farms throughout the Hebei province of Eastern China. The visited farms held anywhere from 50 to 6000 frightened and abused animals. The investigators saw Red foxes, Artic foxes, raccoons and minks all manifesting symptoms of a lifetime of abuse. These animals live out their entire lives cramped in rows of tiny wire cages. “There you can hear the frequent whimpering of the animals, like the sound of babies crying,” affirms the Beijing News. They pace, nod, and circle their heads repeatedly in signs of extreme anxiety. Other animals, overwhelmed by the conditions, develop learned helplessness and they curl up in the back of their cages. The Fun Fur? investigators tracked the animals as they were being transported for sale under brutal conditions. The animals were slaughtered next to the wholesale market by repeatedly striking their heads with a metal stick and in some cases, as seen in the picture above, they were skinned alive. Helpless, they struggle and try to fight back to the very end. Even after their skin had been stripped off, breathing, heartbeat and eyelid movements were evident for up to ten minutes, as seen in the picture to the left. The investigators reported that in some occasions the workers stepped on the animals’ head or neck to strangle it or hold it down. The shocking observations noted in the Fun Fur? report were confirmed by journalists of the newspaper Beijing News on April 5th 2005.

These horrendous atrocities must be stopped! It is our moral obligation to become educated consumers in order to end the needless suffering of countless defenseless animals on these fur farms. We must all stop buying fur garments and anything else with fur trimming and opt for faux fur instead. No animal should suffer simply for the sake of fashion. Nothing is ever worth all of the blood, misery, and pain. Fashion retailers will stop selling these products if no one is buying them. Many designer labels such as, BCBG, Ralph Lauren, Baby Phat, Kenneth Cole, Vivienne Westwood, Stella McCartney and many others listed on the Fur Free Alliance web site have made the humane choice to go fur free. As the HSUS Fur-Free Campaign states, “Through action, education, and compassionate consumer choice, we need to help designers, retailers, and other consumers realize one simple truth: The animals need their fur more than we do.”