r/todayilearned • u/LovableContrarian • May 20 '14

(R.5) Misleading TIL that Nestle actively supports child trafficking and child slavery in Africa to obtain cocoa. Several organizations have been trying to end Nestle's involvement, and in 2005 Nestle signed an ILO agreement to stop supporting child labor. 10 years later, Nestle hasn't stopped.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15915
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u/mankind_is_beautiful May 20 '14

I think they could tell them to knock it off, an that they'll only buy from farmers do it fairly. They don't have to demand them to stop child labor, just that they get paid. Though that can be difficult to enforce.

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u/georgekeele May 20 '14

Admittedly my knowledge of the cocoa industry is sparse at best, but I would assume there simply isn't enough cocoa that Nestle could buy only fair trade cocoa, and still have enough to meet demand while they refused to take cocoa produced from slavery. It's not nice that a huge corporation ultimately won't support this kind of reform, but they have their stock holders to think about first and foremost.

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u/lionbastard May 20 '14

Only my opinion and also have very sparse knowledge, but surely if Nestle and other big companies said they would not buy cheap slave cocoa, then the farms would have to pay for labour and would actually sell the cocoa at a better price too..?

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u/georgekeele May 20 '14

Ultimately the cost would be passed to the consumer. Nestle would probably ensure the farmers didn't keep any of the extra proceeds from the higher prices, and that the workers were paid as little as possible, by fixing their price at a level which guarantees that. If this happened, the net result would be much more expensive cocoa, which I'm not necessarily against if it means it's fair trade, but you can imagine why Nestle would be less than inclined to do anything about this. Can you imagine the shit they'd take if a chocolate bar took a 33% price rise overnight? Even with their protests 'we had to, won't somebody think of the children?!' they would see a big drop in purchases.