They also probably believe America has stopped reaping other benefits of slave labor since the end of the Civil War.
Surprise.
Americans line the pockets of traders and owners of enslaved children by eating chocolate products produced from cocoa beans imported from West Africa.
Some 46 percent of cocoa beans in America's chocolate products comes from Africa's Ivory Coast, where boys as young as 11 years old are forced to plant and harvest the beans for no pay and little food on some 600,000 small farms.
Among the world's major chocolate manuifacturers, only Cadbury Schweppes--based in England--refuses to buy cocoa from the Ivory Coast. Major U.S. manufacturers--notably Hershey Foods and Russell Stover Candies--do not refuse.
The larger question, of course, is why America and other so-called civilized countries tolerate any use of child labor--enslaved or not, paid or not, starved or not .(1 JULY 2001)
