Tuesday, November 4, 2008

More about Bitter Chocolate

You read about Malick Doumbia's terrible experience as a slave labourer in the chocolate industry in Ivory Coast in the excerpt from the book Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the World's most Seductive Sweet and you listened to the interview with the author, Carol Off. If you would like to learn more about the situation, here are some videos:

A Dutch man (from the Netherlands) named Teun van de Keuken was so angry that governments were not doing anything about slavery in the chocolate industry that he tried to have himself convicted of a crime for eating chocolate, saying that he was guilty of promoting slavery. This video shows some clips from this experience.

A montage called Blood Chocolate shows pictures from the slave industry with text to describe the situation. This report from Wales shows the positive effects of fair-trade chocolate grown in Ghana, which borders Ivory Coast.

What can you do about blood chocolate and child slavery? Write to your Member of Parliament to insist that farmers be paid fair wages and that the chocolate we receive is not produced by slave labour.

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