Business Ethics: A Bittersweet Business Turned Slightly Sweeter

How guilty do you feel eating a chocolate bar? Or, to reword the question, how guilty do you now feel eating a chocolate bar heavily based on forced child labour in harsh working conditions? The answer’s a no-brainer.

Since 2010, advocates from Raise the Bar campaign and their partners against the exploitation of children on chocolate farms have been calling on Hershey’s—the largest chocolate manufacturer in North America—to meet the standards of ethically sourced cocoa. In August 2012, Hershey’s finally made a big announcement following the International Labour Rights Forum’s threat to air an ad about Hershey’s child labour conditions on a Jumbotron screen during a Super Bowl game, along with pressure from 41 independent food and natural grocery stores through Raise the Bar’s letter campaign.

The company has pledged that all the cocoa for its Bliss line of chocolates would be Rainforest Alliance Certified by 2013, meaning the chocolates would meet the three pillars of sustainability: Environmental protection, social equity and economic viability. Hershey’s also plans to invest $10 million in West Africa by 2017 to encourage economic initiatives, reduce child labour and improve cocoa supply and launched CocoaLink in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, a communications project which delivers information via mobile phone to improve yields, incomes and standards of living for farmers and ultimately reduce the need for child labour and increase the opportunity for their children to attend school.

For more information on child trafficking and chocolate farms, see BBC’s documentary Chocolate: The Bitter Truth.

Information from: http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/08/post_397.html and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/hersheys-child-labor_n_1247111.html

Image via: http://www.gleniswillmott.eu/the-darker-side-of-chocolate/young-boy-rakes-cocoa-beans-on-a-drying-rack/