Candy bar company Mars was recently accused of using child labor in Ghana to harvest cocoa beans in a new investigation conducted by CBS News.
Published on Wednesday, the outlet found that children as young as five years old are currently working in cocoa bean fields in Ghana. Using machetes regularly, thousands of children are harvesting the cocoa used to make candy such as M&M’s and Snickers.
Per the investigation, field supervisors from small farms are claiming that the children are in school as part of a monitoring system when, in actuality, they’re in the fields. The Mars company has failed to verify that the children were actually attending the school.
Of the 300 children registered at a school, only approximately 100 students actually went to their classes- all of whom said they also worked on the fields to harvest cocoa when not in class.
The company has previously pledged to end its usage of child labor to gather ingredients for its supply chain by 2025. In 2018, Mars dedicated $1 billion to making their supply chains more ethical, working to eliminate child labor and combating deforestation.
Per the company, 65% of the cocoa supply chain in West Africa doesn’t rely on child labor.
With their latest findings, however, CBS’ investigation has reported that, as the supervisors of the fields continue to lie about the attendance of the children, the number given by the company may be false.
In a statement given to CBS News in response to the publishing of the investigation, a Mars spokesperson said that the company is currently looking into the outlet’s findings.
“We are now urgently investigating the claims made in the broadcast and are ready to take appropriate action against any supplier found not to have met our expectations laid out in our Supplier Code of Conduct,” said the spokesperson. “Our cocoa suppliers in Ghana have agreed to adhere to our robust Supplier Code of Conduct, and we have also been clear that they must have a Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation System (CLMRS) in place by 2025 that complies with the industry-leading International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) standard.”
In a 2021 lawsuit, Nestle and Cargill were also accused of participating in unlawful child labor by knowingly buying cocoa beans from farms in Africa that had children harvesting the beans.
Filed by six Malian citizens who said that they were forced to work on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast, the case moved forward to the Supreme Court. The justices eventually ruled in favor of the giant companies, claiming that the appeals court shouldn’t have let the lawsuit move to that stage.
As child labor rates increase globally, Africa has been found to record the highest number of children who are exploited as child laborers.
According to the International Labour Organization, 72.1 million African children have been forced into child labor. Approximately 31.5 million of these children are involved in daily dangerous work.
Agricultural practices were reported as exploiting child labor the most. Approximately 85% of children who are forced into child labor work on herding and commercial farming.
