The West African cocoa industry, where two-thirds of the world’s cocoa is grown, is notorious for its human rights abuses. From hazardous child labor to child trafficking to the poverty wages that farmers earn, little of the cocoa supply chain in West Africa is “fair” or “sustainable.” Yet over the past decade, certification schemes – such as Rainforest Alliance, Fairtrade International, and Fair Trade USA – and so-called sustainability programs – like Mondelez’s Cocoa Life, Nestlé’s Cocoa Plan, Mars’ Cocoa for Generations, and Hershey’s Cocoa For Good – have proliferated. This has led to a confusing array of labels on chocolate products that all purport that the cocoa was produced under “decent working conditions” and “sustainably.”
But with the current cocoa system – in which companies pay unsustainably low prices for cocoa and hazardous child labor is widespread – it’s simply not possible that so much cocoa was actually produced ethically or sustainably. (Here, I am assuming that “ethically” and “sustainably” mean, at a minimum, that farmers and workers earn a living income and no hazardous child labor or forced labor is used during production). But in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, farmers still earn, on average, below the World Bank’s poverty line of $1.90 per day, and thus do not earn enough to be able to pay adult workers anything close to a fair wage. Instead, farmers often rely on child labor – including that of their own children – or, in some cases, on trafficked children to perform work for which they cannot afford to hire adults. The most recent estimate found that about 1.56 million children work on cocoa farms across the two countries.
How then, can so many chocolate products have labels marking them as – or, at the very least, implying – that they are “sustainable”? The truth is that the majority of these standards don’t change conditions and that products with these labels were still often produced, at least in part, with hazardous child labor and by farmers earning unsustainably low wages. These programs have failed to bring farmers out of poverty and have not stopped hazardous child labor on cocoa farms – and, in fact, CAL has even found children doing hazardous child labor on certified farms. Moreover, the most recent study on child labor in the cocoa industry found that the prevalence of child labor had increased by 14 percent between 2013/14 and 2018/19. These certification schemes and sustainability programs have done little to improve the lives of cocoa farmers and children while papering over the real issues in the industry.
In prior blog posts we have elaborated on some of the ways in which certification schemes like Rainforest Alliance and UTZ have failed cocoa farmers – and, in fact, in October 2021 we filed suit against Rainforest Alliance and Hershey in Washington, D.C. Superior Court for false advertising, having found child labor on Rainforest Alliance certified farms. (That case has just been remanded to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Stay tuned as the case moves forward!)
This post focuses on two newer company sustainability programs: Mondelez’s Cocoa Life and Nestlé’s Cocoa Plan. These programs are highly problematic: there are few or no publicly available standards and if there is any monitoring it is done by the companies themselves – a set-up rife for little accountability or impact beyond misleading consumers.
Hazardous Child Labor Found on Mondelez’s Cocoa Life Farms in Ghana
Mondelez, a Chicago-based multinational company that owns the chocolate brands Toblerone, Cadbury, Milka, and Daim, among others, established Cocoa Life in 2012. Cocoa Life is a “sustainability program, a program run by and for the company. According to the Cocoa Life website, the program is
tackling the complex challenges that cocoa farmers face, including climate change, gender inequality, poverty and child labor. … Cocoa Life is addressing these challenges on the ground, working hand-in-hand with the men and women who make their living from cocoa, focusing on where we can make a difference: turning cocoa into a business of choice, creating inclusive and empowered communities and educating on forest conservation and restoration.
Within these nice-sounding phrases, there are few real commitments. Nowhere is Mondelez committing to making changes, only to “working” with farmers. Additionally, sustainability programs do not have publicly available standards. In fact, it’s unclear whether there are any standards. While certification schemes’ standards are often weak and compliance is spotty at best, standards still set a baseline for expected behavior. Without such standards, sustainability programs stand on very little.
Cocoa Life therefore appears to be more of a marketing campaign than a real effort to improve farmers’ lives. Consumers increasingly care that the goods they buy were produced in ethical ways, incentivizing companies to respond to consumer concerns. Yet the lack of oversight allows companies to make changes merely cosmetic, without revamping their supply chains and addressing the core issue in the cocoa supply chain – that companies pay too little for it.
This became evident as a result of a recent investigatory report that found evidence of child labor – and in one case, child trafficking – on Cocoa Life farms. Channel 4, a British television network, recently investigated child labor in Mondelez’s supply chain in Ghana. Reporters visited Cocoa Life farms in Ghana, spoke with farmers, and found repeated instances of children engaged in hazardous child labor. Some of these children described injuries they had received from using machetes or from snake bites on the farm.
Reporters also spoke with a young girl who was working on her uncle’s cocoa farm. She explained that she had been told she would be helping with his younger children, but instead found herself engaged in hazardous labor on the cocoa farm. She wanted to attend school but was too scared to tell her uncle. These instances demonstrate that, like that of many other cocoa and chocolate companies, Mondelez’s supply chain is far from clean. Until Mondelez pays cocoa farmers a fair price for their cocoa and cleans up its supply chain, it should not benefit from false advertising on its products.
Nestlé’s Cocoa Plan
Like Mondelez, Nestlé established its own sustainability program, called Nestlé’s Cocoa Plan, by and for Nestlé products. As is true of Cocoa Life, Nestlé’s Cocoa Plan does not have any public standards. Instead, it has statements and aspirations, policy guidelines, and goals for how cocoa should be sourced.
Nestlé touts its responsible sourcing. For instance, on a bag of Nestlé chocolate chips, in between a label for the Nestlé Cocoa Plan and one for Rainforest Alliance, it says:
Responsibly
sourced cocoa
Better Farming.
Better Lives.
Better Cocoa.
This sounds nice, but there is evidence that the program is not finding and stopping labor abuses, including child labor, on farms from which Nestlé buys. Nestlé has even admitted that in 2019, a full decade after it started the Cocoa Plan, Nestlé found 18,283 children working on its farms. While we applaud Nestlé for releasing these numbers – in contrast to numerous companies that hide behind purposeful ignorance – they demonstrate that the Cocoa Life label does not mean that these farmers or their children have “better lives.” Instead, these labels appear to be aspirational. Nestlé, like all the big chocolate companies out there, must commit to paying farmers a living income for their cocoa. Instead of putting money into so-called sustainability programs and advertising, Nestlé should pay each farmer a true living income. But this would require Nestlé (and other companies) to more than double the price they pay for cocoa.
Conclusion
For over twenty years, companies have promised to end child labor in the cocoa industry. It’s appalling (if not surprising) that companies are greenwashing and labor-washing their products instead of making real changes on the ground. While we continue to fight big chocolate for the labor abuses they perpetuate, it’s a small first step to stop these same companies from profiting off of false labels.
