Chocolate And Slavery Research Paper

Chocolate & Slavery: Informational Essay

Chocolate is known as a delicious treat with no drawbacks. It has not only served as weapons and parts of rations in the past but also as a delectable dessert. Unfortunately, the truth is that slaves and child laborers produce most of the chocolate on earth.
Chocolate and slavery are much intertwined today and have been since the 1800’s. Most cocoa plantations are located in the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon, where approximately 300,000 children are forced to pick cocoa beans for 12 hours each day. On average, children laborers on cocoa farms are between 12 and 16 years old, but there have been children as young as five found. Child laborers live in “small windowless buildings with no access to clean water …show more content…
Children can be sold to cocoa plantations by relatives who are unaware of the dangerous conditions, eager for another income. Sadly, these children may not see their parents again for years, if ever. According to an article from the Food Empowerment Project, main jobs of child laborers include harvesting cocoa beans, cracking the pods open, packed beans, or transported the packs to places by dragging. The machete, a broad and massive knife, is required to break cocoa pods open. Consequently, the majority of children at the plantations are covered with scars from the machete. Children also have to spray cocoa plants with poisonous pesticides to protect them from insects without any protective clothing and proper equipment. Child laborers can also be trafficked into Western African farms and coerced to work as slaves. This horrid slavery happens because of the lack of money in countries or families. From an excerpt in Skipping Stones, “extremely poor countries send children to work in other countries where cocoa beans grow. In exchange their government is paid” (Is it fair to eat chocolate? Deborah Dunn). Cocoa

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Chocolate And Slavery Research Paper

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