Let go of my choco

Release the organic, veal-fed cocoa beans from captivity.

That's the plea for today.

Release the damn cocoa beans.

Cocoa beans are the precursor of chocolote -- the delectable confectionary whose market share reached an estimated value of $73.2 billion in 2001, a 21 percent increase since 1996, according to the International Cocoa Organization.

While not a staple food source, cocoa is big business. Sixty percent of all chocolate is still consumed in the first world nations of the USA and the European Union -- regions that represent only 20 percent of the world's population.

Yet, despite the delectable taste of dark, milk, white, and fruit-filled chocolate, people in the industry are suffering from our first world addiction to cheap goods.

Robin Romano, a photographer and human rights advocate, set out to document the lives of child slaves involved in cocoa production in the Ivory Coast. Their suffering, he says, should give people pause when purchasing candy bars.

According to Romano, one child slave from the Ivory Coast stated: “Tell them, when they're eating chocolate, they're eating my flesh.”

Romano, who took photographs of child slaves during two trips to Ivory Coast during the past several years, said the problem of child labor is deeply rooted in the global economic system.

“I believe in globalization and capitalism, but in its current form, globalization is grossly mismanaged,” he said. “What I saw broke my heart and made me weep.”

He said the story of child labor in the cocoa fields involves corrupt African governments, U.S. and European governments, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and transnational organizations.

“There is not a developed country that is without sin in this area,” Romano said, noting that Africa has suffered from globalization.

According to Romano, one million West African children toil in the chocolate fields. In a nation crippled by poverty and illiteracy, the children are lured by the promise of salaries and other benefits. Yet, once at the cocoa farms, the children are overworked, underfed, abused, and often crippled. At night, they are kept hostage by guards. They face brutal treatment, even death, if they try to escape.

Bama Athreya, executive director of the International Labour Rights Fund, said in an interview with the Independent, that "Nestlé has carelessly bought cocoa from plantations that use child slave labour." A charge Nestlé’s chief executive, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, rejected despite his acknowledgement that, "Children are working in the Ivory Coast, without a doubt."

As a result Athreya and Romano are urging consumers to take a stand against child labor by raising the issue with elected officials, and buying – and encouraging others to buy – fair trade products.

Fair trade sets a minimum price for commodities such as cocoa, he said, based on an amount that people in the producing countries can live on.

“Fair trade is making lives better for farmers,” he said, and “has the potential to be a turning point in the way the world economy works.”

For those requiring additional (personal) reasons, the WWF strongly urges consumers to avoid non-organic, non-fair trade chocolate based on the high levels of Lindane --an organochlorine pesticide that is linked with breast cancer. The pesticide is banned in Europe but still used in some cocoa-producing countries that is linked with breast cancer and can be found in factory-farmed cocoa.

So, we, here on the great Inter-Web, are asking consumers to boycott the Crunchies, the Wunderbars, the KitKats and the Dairy Milks. Instead, head to your local health food store, or grocery chain and vote for fair business practices by buying organic, fair-trade chocolate.

It's time the veal-fed cocoa bean was let loose in the neo-liberal jungle.