I don't waste time feeling guilty about food, but I do feel some twinges about child labor.
Poor West African farm children are still being exploited to make some of the chocolate we buy here in the United States.
Chocolate comes from cacao beans, which grow on trees in rain forests in Mexico, South America, West Africa, the Dominican Republic, Malaysia, Indonesia and New Guinea.
The trees must be at least three to five years old before they bear cacao pods, which must be harvested by hand and hacked open with machetes to release the beans. The beans are fermented and dried for about two weeks before they can be packed and shipped for processing.
For all that labor, the workers get very little.
"West African cocoa revenues average $30 to $108 per year per household member," according to a report by Global Exchange, an international human rights organization.
A fair trade for their laborGlobal Exchange recommends that people buy Fair Trade certified chocolate, which guarantees that a minimum price is paid to cacao farmers. The group says that large chocolate corporations, while signing agreements to end child labor and pledging money to foundations, don't pay enough money for cocoa to end the poverty causing children to work on cacao farms.
For now, the only place I have seen the Fair Trade seal is on chocolates sold at upscale grocery stores such as Feast-O-Rama in Fredericksburg. Brands such as Dagoba, Divine and Green & Black's all bear the Fair Trade logo.
Global Exchange also suggests writing or calling chocolate manufacturers to encourage them to take action. Most cocoa and candy-bar packages include a customer-service phone number.
Industry offers assistanceThe big chocolate companies, such as Mars, do not buy Fair Trade chocolate.
Instead, the industry donates money to the World Cocoa Foundation, which supports child-labor monitoring programs in West Africa. But the donations are just a tiny percentage of what chocolate companies make each year.
The foundation's budget, which also covers programs in Latin and South America and Indonesia, is $2 million. Retail sales of chocolate are $14 billion a year, said Susan Smith, spokesperson for the National Confectioners Association and Chocolate Manufacturers Association.
The foundation trains farmers in Africa, Smith said, although some programs are disrupted by civil war in the region. She said the programs emphasize shade-grown cocoa and diverse crops.
"Cocoa is harvested twice a year," Smith said. "If you can also have banana trees or fruit trees that you can harvest different times of the year, you can have a more steady income."
She said farmers in the program report income increases of 10 to 40 percent,
In my opinion, the programs sound terrific but need more money to reach more families.
Rain forests shade cacaoI'm also intrigued by sustainably grown chocolates such as Cacao de Vida. Allen Young, a researcher at the Milwaukee Public Museum, worked with scientists at the University of Wisconsin and Costa Rican farmers to grow cacao in a way that is environmentally friendly. Young encouraged the farmers to grow cacao in the shade of fruit trees, such as mango and papaya, rather than cut down rain forests. Not only are shade-grown cacao trees less vulnerable to infection, but the other fruit trees guarantee that farmers earn money even when global chocolate prices fluctuate.
The Milwaukee museum sells the Costa Rican chocolate under the name Cacao de Vida. It's pricey, at nearly $5 per large bar, and proceeds go to Costa Rican farmers and the museum.