Chocolate under the supply chains spotlight

Chocolate comes under the spotlight every Lent when ACRATH encourages people to reconsider their chocolate choices and buy products certified slavery-free. This year momentum is building early as Pope Francis and civic leaders focus on supply chains more broadly.
Ash Wednesday on March 5 will mark the beginning of ACRATH’s Easter chocolate awareness campaign. In the weeks leading up to Easter Sunday on April 20, Australians will spend billions of dollars on chocolate. Much of the chocolate consumed will be produced using cocoa beans picked by children and adults in conditions that are often unsafe and restrict a child’s access to education.
There are many free resources here if you are planning to promote slavery-free chocolate in your home, workplace and amongst family and friends. An important resource is the fifth edition of Be Slavery Free’s Chocolate Scorecard, which can help you use your buying power for good.
Key insights of the Chocolate Scorecard include the following:

- 100% of companies have a policy for monitoring, reducing, or eliminating child labour, but only an average of around 55% of the supply chains are being covered by a program
- 68% of respondents have evidence that the programs or schemes are reducing the prevalence of child labour situations – but verification is often lacking
- 18% of respondent companies found and successfully remediated cases of forced labour and human trafficking in the past 12 months – great increase in transparency and action
- 70% of respondent companies have a policy to monitor, reduce or eliminate the exposure of children to pesticides in their supply chains
- Traceability has increased but still about 50% of supply chain is indirect (not traced).
- Almost all of the participating chocolate companies believe that a living income is a human right, but only six companies are paying a living income to all their farmers.
Pope Francis also weighed in on the issue of supply chains on January 15 during his audience for the second consecutive week, saying people and institutions can protect children by changing what they buy and what they invest in.
“Fighting exploitation, particularly child exploitation, is the high road to building a better future for all of society,” said the Pope – according to a report from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
“Child abuse, in whatever form it may be, is a despicable and heinous act. It is a most serious violation of God’s commandments.”
Pope Francis urged all people to consider what they can do as individuals to respond to the societal problem of child exploitation.
“First of all, we must recognise that, if we want to eradicate child labour, we cannot be complicit in it,” he said, explaining that people support child labour “when we buy products that employ child labour”.
“How can I eat and dress myself knowing that behind that food or those clothes, there are exploited children who work instead of going to school?” he said. “The knowledge about what we buy is the first act in not being complicit. Look at where those products come from.”
Many organisations, including Be Slavery Free, have called on the Federal Government to introduce legislation to ban the import of products made with forced and child labour into Australia. The USA, Canada, Mexico and Europe have enacted such bans.
So this Lent we ask you to look for the Rainforest Alliance or Fairtrade International certifications when buying chocolate.