More than 200 religious organisations, labour, consumer, environmental, and human rights groups are calling on confectionery giant M&M/Mars to ensure fair labour practices for cocoa workers.
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Coming as M&Ms announces the new colour for its candies after a large promotional campaign, a letter sent to M&M/Mars headquarters by the broad based coalition reads: “Surely, most of your customers would be outraged to learn that the sweetness of their favourite chocolate is tainted with the bitterness of slavery and worker exploitation.
The groups also demand that the company commit to purchasing at least 5% of its chocolate as Fair Trade Certified.
“Thousands of cocoa farmers are getting paid prices that are so low that they are living on the edge of starvation,” says Deborah James, the Fair Trade director at Global Exchange, an international human rights organisation that is spearheading the M&M campaign. “While M&M pours large amounts of money into PR gimmicks like its global colour vote, cocoa farmers are struggling to survive, and some are workers even suffer from slavery.”
In recent years, global overproduction of cocoa has lowered the price of cocoa. A typical cocoa farmer receives about 1 cent for a regular candy bar. In order to maintain profits, some cocoa producers have resorted to paying their workers poverty wages or even using child slaves. Investigations by the US State Department, UNICEF and the International Labor Organisation have revealed a resurgence of child slavery in the cocoa fields of the Ivory Coast, where 43% of the world¹s raw chocolate comes from.
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By GlobalDataFair Trade gets at the root of the labor exploitation by guaranteeing a minimum price for small farmers¹ harvests. This minimum price ensures a living wage for workers, breaking cycle of poverty and slavery.
“As a leader of the US$13bn chocolate industry,[M&M/Mars] has the responsibility to ensure that its principal product, chocolate, is produced under fair labour conditions,” the letter adds.
Fair Trade cooperatives in Ghana, Cameroon, Brazil, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Belize and Costa Rica produced 89 million pounds of raw chocolate last year. If M&M wanted to start offering Fair Trade, there is more than enough supply to do so.
“This company has the resources and the ability to make a dramatic improvement in the lives of cocoa farmers,” says James. “Unfortunately, it lacks the will.”
