John Oliver, Child Labor in the Chocolate Industry: 'It Is Worse Than You May Realize' 🎃

[appalachiablue]

The Guardian, Oct. 30, 2023. - Ed. For Halloween, the Last Week Tonight host delves into the long-lived child labor practices in the world’s chocolate supply.

For Halloween week, John Oliver focused his main segment of Last Week Tonight on the abuses of the chocolate industry, which rakes in about $140bn a year. He acknowledged that the segment sounds like it could be pleasant: “You might be at home thinking ‘I’ve seen this show before, this feels like this could be one of those fun stories but is it about to take a turn? I’ve got a bag of fun-sized Snickers that I’m going to hand out to tiny Elsas & Luigis, are you gonna make that weird for me?’ Well, yes, yes I am.”

Unfortunately, “for all the money and happiness surrounding chocolate, there is one group that doesn’t get to share in it, and that is the farmers who grow cocoa in the first place,” he continued. Most farmers haven’t ever tasted chocolate because they can’t afford it. More than 60% of cocoa comes from west Africa, Ivory Coast and Ghana, in which 30-58% of residents earn a gross income below the World Bank’s extreme poverty line.

“There’s something a bit weird about a product so synonymous with spreading joy and giving babies what’s basically a cocaine rush, abandoning those who grow its key ingredient to grinding poverty,” said Oliver. “Even if you had a sense that cocoa production had issues, the truth is, from the land it’s grown on to the workers who harvest it, it is worse than you may realize.” Oliver delved into the basics of the cocoa industry, which is mostly grown on small family-run plots and cultivated by hand.

Though there are many small farmers, the industry is dominated by a handful of cocoa trading companies: Cargill, Barry Callebaut & OFI, which buy & process about 60% of the world’s cocoa. They sell to small companies - Mars, Hershey, Mondelēz, Ferrero & Nestlé, which sell over half the world’s chocolate. “When you have so many farmers & so few buyers, the buyers clearly have a big advantage,” which is why just 6% of a chocolate bar’s value returns to the farmer. “..there are clearly massive disparities in who reaps the benefits of this extremely profitable industry.” Child labor is “an open secret”...

- Read More,
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/oct/30/john-oliver-last-week-tonight-chocolate-industry-child-labor

[underpants]

1. I think we are watching that tonight.

[appalachiablue]

2. Same, I'm glad Oliver is calling attention to this major issue.

So many people are unaware of the harsh reality and disparities, esp. the many poor farmers and children who toil for very little in this highly profitable global system.