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As with most other commodities that have to be imported from overseas, there are two main issues that will no doubt be of concern to consumers with regard to chocolate. The first is the labour practices of the workers who produce the cocoa and the second is the issue of organic versus conventional farming of ingredients.

West Africa is the largest producer of cocoa and Ivory Coast is the largest cocoa producing country – accounting for 40% of the world market in 2005/61. But this large market doesn't necessarily mean a good income for the farmers who actually produce the cocoa - according to the European Fair Trade Association, cocoa farmers get barely 5% of the total profit from each conventional bar of chocolate sold2. Major chocolate and cocoa processing companies have taken no steps to ensure stability of prices for cocoa and so the prices fluctuate from year to year. Even in years when the prices increase, farmers will have accumulated debt during years when prices were below production costs. Deregulation of agriculture in West Africa has further exacerbated the problem and forced farmers to cut their labour costs still further. The majority of cocoa farmers are small family farms – a reduction in income means taking children out of school to work on the family farm. The worst case scenario is trafficked children forced to work on the larger cocoa plantations.

According to the Stop the Traffik campaign for an end to modern slavery, 12,000 children have been trafficked into cocoa farms in Ivory Coast3. A study published by the IITA4 found that an estimated 284,000 children on cocoa farms in West Africa were 'either involved in hazardous work, unprotected or unfree, or have been trafficked.' Most of the children referred to in this report were on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast, the remainder in Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria. The work involves potentially hazardous tasks such as using machetes and applying pesticides and insecticides without the necessary protective equipment – and 66% of child cocoa workers in the Ivory Coast for example did not attend school.

Scene Green recommends Fairtrade certified chocolate – Stop the Traffik claim that this is the only chocolate guaranteed to be produced without child labour – in addition, it guarantees a minimum price paid to cocoa farmers for their crops and aims to pay parents enough money to allow their children to stop working and return to school.

The other main issue regarding chocolate is organic versus non-organic. As usual, Scene Green would always recommend the former since we believe it is a better environmental choice. However, there is a particular pesticide used on cocoa trees to protect them from the capsid bug that is used in areas such as West Africa that make organic more of an issue for cocoa than other crops. The pesticide is Lindane - an organo-chlorinated pesticide in the same chemical family as DDT. A confidential leaked report for the EU, prepared by Austria's Agriculture Ministry states that Lindane is a suspected carcinogenic substance for which there is no safe exposure level5.

Lindane was banned for use as an agricultural pesticide by the EU in 2000 but is still used in cocoa producing areas so there may be some risk that residues will still be present in non-organic chocolate We would advise therefore that it's best to stick to organic chocolate wherever possible – however, it is worth noting that some Fairtrade chocolate relies on cocoa grown by farmers who do not use pesticides but are not yet organically certified, so if in doubt it is always worth checking with the manufacturer.




  1. The World Cocoa Foundation, www.worldcocoafoundation.org.
  2. 'While Chocolate Lovers Smile, Child Cocoa Workers Cry. Abusive Child Labour in The Cocoa Industry: How Corporations and International Financial Institutions Are Causing It & How Fair Trade Can Solve It'. D Toler, M Schweisguth. Global Exchange. www.globalexchange.org.
  3. www.stopthetraffik.org
  4. 'Child Labor in the Cocoa Sector of West Africa'. IITA - International Institute of Tropical Agriculture. August 2002.
  5. 'Immediate Pesticide Ban Demanded'. BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk. 19th March 1999. A Kirby.
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Click on direct links below. Ecotopia Eco ShoppingMulu ChocolateConscious Chocolate Raw Pesticide Free ChocolateStop The Traffik Cotton accounts for 25 percent of all insecticides and 12 percent of all pesticides used.