There is no debate on child slavery. Whether or not it is morally, emotionally and ethically correct is not a question. Obviously, child slavery is wrong and no one would argue against attempts to abolish it. The fact of the matter is, though, that no matter how tasty the product is, we still feel guilty knowing we’ve purchased and consumed chocolate produced by little kids who are forced to work on cocoa bean plantations in the heart of West Africa.

So why do people promote child slavery by buying chocolate? Surprisingly, hardly anyone knows the true source of dark and milk chocolate—no, white chocolate is NOT chocolate. While one would guess that something as horrible as child slavery would be known to everyone, the reality is that it goes unnoticed. Under the radar. Overlooked. No one knows the truth about where the delicious, magical, heart-healing treat actually comes from.

So why don’t people know about cocoa production? The truth is that major chocolate companies try to hide it. Because shelve space for candy is so scarce in stores, competing chocolate companies do not want to recognize nor advertise the fact that their chocolate’s source comes from forced labor in Africa in fear of losing faithful customers and the revenue that comes with it. Although some things have been done to lessen slave trafficking in Africa, much still needs to be done to stop it permenantly. Laws, such as the Fair Trade regulation, need to be implemented so that all workers are treated and paid fairly. While there has been success in implementing such laws, enough hasn’t been done to help very many people who are trapped within the cocoa bean prison.

For my original contribution, I recently created a survey asking twenty students four questions
to measure their awareness on the issue of slave trafficking in the chocolate industry:

1. Where do you think the majority of cocoa is produced?
2. Who do you think produces it?
3. Do you think major chocolate companies know where the cocoa comes from?
4. How much effort do you think they put in to stopping child slavery?

The answers I found were astonishing. Ninteen out of twenty people answered the first question wrong, eighteen for the second question, fifteen for the third, and eight for the fourth. It is evident that enough people do not know a thing about where the root of one of the world’s largest industries comes from. These questions are very basic and can easily be answered even if the person taking them has heard no more than a sentence about the truth of the chocolate industry. In my research hyptertext, my aim is to raise peoples’ awareness so that they can take action to help stop the awful reality that is the source to the world famous chocolate industry.