Child Labor Used to Make Chocolate

 Read about issues with Child Labor and the Chocolate Industry (retrieved from: NEWSELA):

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Some farms on the African continent force children to work. They grow cocoa beans. Then the farms sell cocoa to companies that make chocolate. 

Cocoa from forced child labor should not come to the United States, two U.S. lawmakers said. The cocoa should not be imported, they said. 

Ron Wyden is a lawmaker from Oregon. Sherrod Brown is a lawmaker from Ohio. They wrote a letter on July 16 about the problem. The letter was to the U.S. government.

Chocolate Companies Were Supposed To Stop Buying Cocoa

Government officials can block imported goods. They can stop things made by forced workers. The lawmakers wrote that there are reasons to block cocoa from Ivory Coast. It is a country in western Africa. It is the world's biggest cocoa maker.

The letter talked about a news story about cocoa farms. The story said big chocolate companies have not stopped child labor. The companies buy cocoa from Africa. They promised earlier to avoid child labor.

Blocking cocoa from the Ivory Coast could bring big changes. It would affect U.S. chocolate companies. The Ivory Coast makes about one-third of the world's cocoa.

The letter said children are forced to work on cocoa farms. Some imports were made with child labor, it said. The U.S. must do more to fight child labor, the letter said.

Some of the world's largest chocolate companies are part of it. Mars, Nestle and Hershey make chocolate. They promised to avoid buying cocoa from forced labor farms. That was in 2001.

Countries Say Child Labor Hurts Them

The forced work continues, though. It goes on in Ivory Coast and Ghana, another country on the African continent. A study by the U.S. government in 2015 looked at cocoa farms there. It said more than 2 million children worked there. Most worked on family farms. Thousands of other children are taken from neighboring countries, though. They are made to work on the farms. They are not paid.

Chocolate companies are not fixing the problem, the lawmakers said. Watching themselves does not work. The past 20 years have shown that, the letter said.

Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is the president of Ghana. He said farmers make much less money than chocolate companies. That is not fair, he said. 

Some blame child labor on cocoa farmers being poor. The governments of Ghana and Ivory Coast said they would charge higher prices. Leaders say that will raise farmers' pay. They say it will cut the use of child labor.