Cocoa beware

Wrapped up in that polypropylene-sheathed chocolate bar lies an uncomfortable truth. Child labour and rampant deforestation are still entrenched in cocoa production, despite the fact that the world’s largest chocolate companies have long vowed to eliminate them. And although these same producers emblazon their chocolates with traceability and sustainability certifications, a Washington Post report has revealed shortcomings in the most significant cocoa certifier that call their veracity into question.

More than two million children work, often in treacherous conditions, on the West African plantations ( Ghana and Ivory Coast) responsible for the majority of the global supply. Meanwhile, deforestation in the region — the widespread clearing of rainforests holding great biodiversity in order to plant cocoa trees en masse — which chocolate giants including Mars and Nestlé have promised to address, has only accelerated.

Producer of more than a third of the world’s cocoa, Ivory Coast has lost its rainforests more quickly than most; upwards of 80 per cent are already gone, according to an article in the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies publication Yale Environment 360. And as stated in a separate Washington Post report, the rate of rainforest depletion in both Ghana and Ivory Coast last year was higher than anywhere else on the planet. “Any time someone bites on a chocolate bar in the United States, a tree is being cut down,” said Eric Agnero, an environmental activist in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

Utz, a Dutch organization in charge of inspecting much of the world’s cocoa supply “has had significant lapses in its compliance reviews,” the Washington Post found. Given that it’s the largest of its kind, and verified roughly two-thirds of the world’s total supply of certified cocoa (1.5 million tons) in 2017 alone, these breaches could have far-reaching effects.

According to Utz’s website, “tackling child labour is at the core” of its cocoa certification program. In its review of two reports co-sponsored by the certifier, the Washington Post found that in Ivory Coast, Utz- approved plantations had been associated with a higher rate of child labourers. According to the Washington Post, child labourers put “in more work deemed dangerous, such as working with machetes and insecticides.”

While protecting the environment is within its purview, a spokesperson reportedly admitted that nearly 5,000 previously certified Utz farms were located in supposedly protected areas. They had been previously certified, but are no longer.

Although “very few international companies directly source from protected areas,” Richard Scobey, president of the World Cocoa Foundation, told Yale Environment 360, they’re there to indirectly supply the dozen companies that acquire 85 per cent of the harvest via intermediaries.

Shoppers have shown that they’re prepared to pay more for certified chocolate, but according to the findings, they’re potentially being misled. “Consumers believe that by buying certified cocoa they are doing something good for the environment, or children, or farmers,” François Ruf, an Ivory Coast-based researcher and co-author of a 2013 study co-sponsored by Utz, told the Washington Post. “But that is a fiction.”