Driving home from work today, I heard a report on NPR that hit me in the gut and forced my stomach to turn a somersault.

Apparently, 70% of the world's cocoa (the chief ingrediant in chocolate) is grown in the Ivory Coast, Africa. Cocoa farms in this area rely heavily on child slave labor! (Yes, you read it correctly, CHILD SLAVE LABOR.)

Aside from growers abducting children at random, poor families in this region are also known to sell their children into slavery. (Imagine how impoverished they must be!) They're usually boys ages 12 to 16. They are forced to work seven days a week for no pay. If they complain, they are beaten. If they try to run away, they are killed.

I know what you're thinking. It's the 21st century! This sounds ludecrous! This has to be a farce, a leftist paranoia conspiracy plot set out to destroy innocent chocloteers for no valid reason! Well, no. Sadly, most horrifically, it's all true. I did the research after I got home. I'm actually ashamed to say that this problem and the subsoquent boycott has been going on for some time. I just haven't been aware of it.

Companies such as Nestle, M&M/Mars, and Hershey's are aware of these horendous labor practices, but it does not stop them from buying cocoa from such farms. Corporate spokespeople for these companies say that they simply have no control to change these practices, though Nestle has played a part in changing similar problems with coffee farms. They agreed to follow fair trade policies with coffee farmers in the same region when it proved necessary in order to compete in the current coffee market. (Companies like Starbucks advertise how they only deal with humane growers. Funny how humanity is a BIG marketing tool.)

It's 2006 for heaven's sake! When are we going to insist that corporations cannot ignore basic, THE MOST BASIC, human rights? Is the almighty dollar really worth the lives of children? Nestle is reported to have profits upwards of $65 billion a year, and that's not adding the profits made by Mars or Hershey's. Are they trying to tell me that there isn't any room to pay a little more for cocoa farmed without inflicting human atrocity?

Companies like Clif Bar, Newman's Own, Endangered Species Chocolate Company, etc. don't seem to have trouble mixing profits with conscience. They've proven it's not impossible.

I say demand better. Join the boycott!