Slave Chocolate
An African Studies presentation.
Child Slaves
In Africa most of the population live in very rough conditions. People are very poor, they lack proper medical treatment, and they don’t have much modern technology. Cocoa is produced by hand in Africa, so plantation owners use child slaves to grow and produce chocolate from the Cacao plants.
Cacao tree farmers buy children from their parents in order to make them child slaves. They convince the parents that their children will have better lives and can even send money home to them. But these children, usually eleven to sixteen years old and sometimes even younger, are forced to do hard manual labor from 80 to 100 hours a week. They are paid nothing, are underfed, receive no education, and are often ruthlessly beaten, if they try to escape. Most of the children will never see their families again.
Whats being done?
Nothing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;)
Fuck You! That's right! Have you seen how much chocolate the average person consumes every year? In the U.S. its twelve pounds! All of Europe eats more than that! Denmark maxes out at like TWENTY FOUR FUCKING POUNDS! NOBODY FUCKING CARES!
Work Conditions
Instead of going to school, boys are forced to spend long days hacking open cocoa pods with machetes, handling dangerous pesticides, and carrying heavy loads, getting the cocoa for the shitty chocolate you eat every day!
Fuck You!
Hershey's cool right?
Fuck You! No! Hershey's the worst! TheY don't respond to any accusations of child labor in its supply chain and they refuse to reveal any information about where it sources its cocoa from.
Letter from the author
I'm a typical consumer, there's no way I haven't eaten some kind of chocolate during the last week. If you're the average person, you're reading this and you've most likely consumed chocolate in the last 48 hours and you're like "Man, fuck this dude, if he's so passionate about this, how come he's not doing something like not eating chocolate? I'M WRITING THIS, YOU DUMB ASS! I'M PROTESTING THROUGH WRITING MY OPINIONS! FIRST AMENDMENT TYPE SHIT! HERE'S THE PARADOX MOTHER FUCKER! IF WE PASS BILLS FORCING COMPANIES LIKE HERSHEY'S, MARS, AND NESTLE TO PROVE THAT THEY'RE NOT SOURCING COCOA FROM SLAVE FARMS, THEN THEY HAVE TO GET FROM NON SLAVE FARMS. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH CHOCOLATE IS PRODUCED BY NON SLAVE FARMS? NOT FUCKING MUCH! THERE'S ALREADY A SHORTAGE OF COCOA AS IT IS, DUE TO HOW FUCKING HARD IT IS TO GROW COCOA,SO IF WE FORCED THE CHOCOLATE INDUSTRY TO GET COCOA FROM CERTIFIED NON SLAVE PRODUCED FARMS, WE WOULD CRIPPLE IF NOT DESTROY A SIXTY. BILLION. DOLLAR. INDUSTRY. PLUS EVERYONE LOVES CHOCO SO LETS KEEP DOIN WHAT WERE DOING. WELCOME TO THE WORLD BITCH! ISN'T IT FUCKING GRAND?
-Braeden S.