Dark side of the chocolate business

Chocolate is fantastic. Sometimes called "theobroma", or "food of the gods", it's been enjoyed by humans for centuries. It is hard not to love the feeling of chocolate melting in your mouth.

Cocoa is the main ingredient in chocolate and is primarily grown in Ghana and the Ivory Coast. This industry is booming.

But there is a darker side to chocolate that is often ignored and covered up. The cocoa business is fraught with inequalities suffered by workers, often children, and employers alike.

Cocoa farmers are often forced to put up with gross inequalities. Most of these problems revolve around unfair pay. This problem was mainly caused by the liberalisation of the cocoa industry in the 1980s.

The liberalisation forced taxes and tariffs to be lifted and most government involvement to be relaxed. The liberalisation caused prices to fluctuate, and they haven't settled to this day.

Farmers are never sure how much they will earn and if they will even be able to provide their families with the necessities they require, such as food and shelter. They have to pull their children out of school as they cannot afford the fees and they need their children's help on the farm.

This means that their children will never receive a proper education, are unable to get reasonable employment elsewhere, and are unable to leave the cocoa industry and break the chains of poverty in which they're trapped.

As children are cheaper and easier to traffic than adults, they are often forced to work on the farms, suffering many atrocities along the way.

Often sold by members of their own family, they usually come from the poor neighbouring country of Burkina Faso. They are torn away from their home and forced to work long hours with only just enough food to sustain them. They are often beaten.

They have to work in hazardous environments, around dangerous pesticides and using sharp implements such as machetes. They are locked up at night in cramped conditions and are unable to attend school while they fulfil their roles of forced servitude.

Thus, illiteracy will affect their later life as they will be unable to get a good job with which to support themselves or their families.

There are many things being done to stop the inequalities in the cocoa industry.

Farmers are forming co-operatives, banding together to sell their beans for better prices. Oxfam is also addressing the problem of pay as, along with Fair-Trade, and the main chocolate companies, such as Cadbury and Nestle, it tries to stop child labour.

They are also working to create awareness among buyers worldwide and attempting to ensure that cocoa farmers get regular, reasonable prices.

But these problems are much too big to be stopped by these small measures. Cocoa-growing communities need the help of the whole world.

By buying chocolate that could have been produced by child slaves, we are condoning this behaviour, telling the companies that we don't mind the measures they take, as long as we get nice cheap chocolate.

But it is time for us to say no; buy fair-trade certified chocolate, such as Whittaker's Creamy Milk, or Scarborough Fair. Yes, it is slightly more expensive than the average chocolate bar, but is a low price worth a child's future?

So next time you bite into that sweet treat we call chocolate, stop and think. How many injustices have been suffered and how many lives have been ruined in the production of this food of the gods?

Georgia Butt, Year 10, St Cuthbert's College