The Horrible Side of Chocolate by Daniel Rivas

                       Dear chocoholics,

         

Can you imagine the real life story of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? People locked in the factory, making a lifetime supply of chocolate. Well this is happening in the real life; however it’s a total opposite. They take away children from their parents and force them to work in the Ivory Coast for making chocolate. What they are using today is called child labor.

The children are the ones making the rich and delicious flavor of chocolate. In front of that, kids are suffering making the chocolate. They harvest the cocoa bean and are exposed to harmful chemicals from the fertilizers they use to make it grow faster. The children also get hurt from using machetes. Machetes are huge knives which are used to cut down the cocoa beans. They get wounded from the machete and their cuts get infected, then they get sick. They also walk around in the woods with no shoes and get splinters, cuts and diseases. The worst part is that they don’t get paid. After all their hard work, they don’t get anything in return. Lastly, their education is in danger. Since they are working in the farm, they don’t go to school and don’t know things in their level.

We can take actions for stopping child labor. We can buy Fair trade chocolate. In the cocoa industry, "a fair trade standards guarantee that farmers will receive $150 on top of market prices for each ton of cocoa they produce, as long as they meet specified labor standard... "according to the article Reverse Trick or Treaters Deliver Fair Trade Chocolate byWorld Watch Institute.  For example,  farm workers don’t use kids younger than 15 and their education is not harmed and they don’t perform particularly hazardous tasks such as wielding a machete or applying pesticides. So we can buy fair trade chocolate so the farmers can get a reward for not using child labor. We can also do reverse trick or treating. Reverse trick or treating is when you get candy for Halloween but then you give  fair trade chocolate in return.

In conclusion, all of this damage is because of chocolate. The least we can do is stand up for them and stop CHILD LABOR!!!!!!