Tim Newman, Campaigns Director, International Labor Rights Forum
Last week, we wrote on this blog about a new documentary by BBC's Panorama about the continued use of trafficking and child labor in West Africa's cocoa industry. In our last blog post, we wrote about how no certification program can make a guarantee that there is no child labor used on certified farms, but it is essential to ensure that there is a strong system in place to trace cocoa to the farm level, identify abuses and properly remediate abuses. The documentary makes clear that nine years after companies committed to ending labor rights abuses in their cocoa supply chains, the exploitation continues.
Many companies like Hershey have not done enough to trace their cocoa so that they can know if child labor exists in their supply chain and take appropriate action to end these abuses. You can send an e-mail to Hershey now.
And, below you can watch the Panorama documentary in six parts.
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