The Chocolate Menace Johan Cedeno

Dear Mr. Chocoholic,

                5,6,and7 year old working in a difficult working conditions with a machete in one hand and cocoa beans in the other. These little boys are wondering if they’re going to have enough to eat. Also we consumers are helping it happen. These are the dark truths revealed in the dark Side of Chocolate a documentary of child labor in the cocoa industry.

     Children are trafficked to the Ivory Coast to work with others cutting down cocoa beans and separating the cocoa seeds. They also don’t go to school, and may never see their parents again. They work and work and don’t get anything in return. The cruelty of being forced to work every day all-day. Traumatized kids who don’t even know what chocolate is. In 2001 journalists uncovered labor abuses of children in  the Ivory Coast. Frieda Denise Cooper wrote a poem how little kids are being trafficked and they work their hands off to separate cocoa.

      A young boy called Abdoul worked cutting down cocoa beans that he hasn’t even tasted chocolate and 75 percent of cocoa comes from the Ivory Coast. Being exposed to pesticides and fertilizers inhaling all those chemicals damages their bodies. Chocolate company that pay 1 euro for each kilo of cocoa seed don’t know or care that it was little boy who separated them. Do you realize when you eat chocolate it was probably made by a little boy using large machetes and surrounded by pesticides. Its says in Reverse “Trick or Treaters “ Deliver fair trade chocolate “there an outrageous number of children suffering from horrible back pain and other ergonomic neck issues between ages 5 and 18 just so you can have chocolate”. But we can change that instead of buying normal chocolate buy fair trade chocolate. Fair trade chocolate guarantees farmers that farmers receive of 150 dollars  on top of market prices for each ton of cocoa they produced.You should buy fair trade chocolate because the Hershey bar starts its life as cocoa beans, in the African nations of Ghana and Ivory Coast, where children are more likely to face hunger and mal nutrition’s than enjoy  the taste of a chocolate bar.

      Since we children are the ones who have a strong love for chocolate ,our voices would mean something. So let’s RAISE OUR VOICES!