Wellness Wednesday 

This is the last post in the WWT  interpretation of Lent.

With the arrival of chocolate and the Easter bunny colliding with the international day of remembrance of the victims of slavery and the transAtlantic slave trade day this weekend, it is time to talk about the chocolate industry’s dirty little secret: slavery.

The majority of cacao used in commercial chocolate production comes from West Africa, specifically Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Children are often recruited to work on the cacao plantations and usually in horrendous conditions.

https://wealworldtravel.com/2014/02/16/black-history-is-all-fair-in-love-and-chocolate/

The transAtlantic slave trade brought millions of west Africans to work as slaves in the colonies of European empires in the new world. Today multinational corporations are like a modern-day form of colonial powers and they employ people (mainly children) in West Africa to work as slaves for their capitalist empires. Slavery has crossed back over the Atlantic. Oh the irony.

The following link provides a synopsis of the documentary Semisweet: Life in Chocolate. This film features glimpses into how various people’s lives have been affected by chocolate, including some of the child workers in Côte d’Ivoire.

http://choco-locate.com/documentary/

Give up…

unethically sourced chocolate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amanda-gregory/chocolate-and-child-slave_b_4181089.html

&

Replace with…

fair trade chocolate.

http://www.slavefreechocolate.org/ethical-chocolate-companies/

Click to access ChocolateScorecard2011.pdf

Photo by Kimberley (c)2016