The Sins of Chocolate Brands

Chocolate companies have been making pledges to reduce child labor for over twenty years. The earliest agreement was made in 2001, after the U.S. Congress pushed company executives to commit to completely removing child labor in most forms from their supply chains within four years. Meeting those commitments required improving the systemic economic issues that drive child labor and making a quality certification structure. A leader from the International Cocoa Initiative stated that there was basically no possibility for chocolate companies to fulfill their promises for the original 2001 goal by the deadline in 2005. After the deadline passed, they decided to edit their goals in order to focus more on creating certifications to put on consumer labels and simply track labor practices. They also lightened the goals. The 2001 goal aimed for completely removing child labor from the supply, while the 2020 plan’s goal was to decrease it by 70%.The original goals did not grasp how huge the issues really are. The Washington Post reports the companies missed their target dates to remove child labor from their cocoa supply in 2005, 2008, and 2010.

In 2019, it was stated that the 2020 goal of reducing child labor by 70% was not anticipated to be reached. I could not find much information on whether or not it was.

It has been found that after making commitments, chocolate companies made slow progress because they weren’t sure what steps to take or did not devote enough of their funding to it. When legislation was proposed to assess use of child labor, chocolate industry spokespeople insisted that government intervention was not needed.

When asked whether child labor was involved in their products, Hershey, Mars, and Nestlé all could not confirm there was none. Mars produces M&M’s and Milky Ways, and Hershey's sells Kisses and Reese’s, among other things. Nestlé produces several popular candies, mostly outside of the U.S.

These huge companies have a hard time tracing back which farms their cocoa even originates from. As of 2018, Mars was only able to track 24% of their cocoa back to its source. Both Hershey and Nestlé could trace less than half of their supply back to the farms.