10 years of Tony's blog #5: chocolate criminal without you knowing it

We hear you thinking: 'huh, me?' Yes, you. You may not know it... but with that bite of chocolate you just took (or yesterday) you could easily be an accomplice to chocolate crime. Depending on which chocolate you eat, you are perpetuating the criminal activities of the established chocolate order. And you probably didn't do that consciously..

Do you remember how Tony's Chocolonely came into being ten years ago? How journalist Teun van de Keuken of the Value Inspection Service tried to make it clear that by eating chocolate we are all helping to maintain slavery on the cocoa plantations? He turned himself in as a chocolate criminal after eating a number of chocolate bars. He started a lawsuit against himself. Because if chocolate eaters are guilty, he thought, then the chocolate companies must change.

At the same time, interest groups in the USA also filed a lawsuit, based on the same frustration as Teun's. Not against themselves... But against some of the big chocolate giants. Nestlé, ADM and Cargill were charged with processing and selling cocoa harvested by child slaves. And.. there are more similar charges pending against, for example, Mars and Hershey's.

The chocolate giants have been fighting for years to ensure that the lawsuits filed do not have to occur. For example, because 'the use of child slaves' takes place in Africa, and that is outside their legal place of residence. Real? Yes, really. A good example of sticking your head in a mountain of cocoa beans. Because as early as 2001, the same companies promised to completely eradicate the worst forms of child labor in the Harkin Engel Protocol. And... so far, not so good... because in 2015, especially in Ivory Coast, even more children were working under illegal and dangerous conditions on cocoa plantations than ever before according to research by Tulane University.

Two weeks ago the message appeared in the Independent that the lawsuit against Nestlé, ADM and Cargill may now take place after all, about ten years later. For us, this is confirmation of the problem we are fighting against, slavery and exploitation in the cocoa industry. We want companies to take responsibility instead of fighting to get out of it!

We want 100% slave-free chocolate to become normal, and everything else not to be normal. The outcome of this lawsuit should at least be that the standard is set that a company is responsible for its entire chain and therefore also for the problems at the beginning of the cocoa chain. Less than a six-hour flight from us. In Africa.

The power in the cocoa industry is in the hands of a few major players, who all have some kind of social or sustainable program. But these separate initiatives are not focused on the root causes of the problem and do not add up. Legislation should oblige companies to be transparent about their chain and to demonstrate what they are doing to prevent slavery and exploitation. That is why we are following this lawsuit closely.