Before you trick-or-treat, consider this scary tale

Beyond costumes, haunted houses and jack-o-lanterns, there may be something scarier at your own front door this Halloween.

All around the country on the famed October holiday, children will go door-to-door chanting “trick-or-treat” and will receive a treat in return. This treat will not be so sweet, however, if marketed by some of the major chocolate companies.

Recent investigations and searches by journalists for the BBC and GreenAmerica magazine, as well as documentarians behind the film “The Dark Side of Chocolate,” have shown that the company uses chocolate picked by child slaves. Though not directly connected to brands such as Hershey (the biggest offender by how much chocolate it buys to try to up demand), Mars or Nestle, the process by which the cocoa plant becomes a treat is highly unethical.

It all starts at a plantation, usually on the Ivory Coast, where children harvest the pods from a high bush and then pluck and dry the beans. These beans are then sold to intermediaries who drive them further through the country to be sold to national exporters, where the beans will be washed, packed and sold again and then sent on a barge to Europe.

After being traded on the stock market of chocolate, the beans make their way to chocolate companies, and go from bean to cocoa powder or butter. Finally, the cocoa powder or butter is sent to a chocolate manufacturing factory, where it is used to make into the candy you see on store shelves.

The whole process is laden with transport, which pollutes the air and ocean. But it is at the plantation where the issue of child labor and trafficking is most concerning.

“Children are constantly being transported. Kids are 11-14 years old, always leaving from the bus station,” Idrissa Kante, general secretary of bus transportation in Mali, stated in the documentary following the cocoa plantation child trafficking issue, “The Dark Side of Chocolate.”

The Ivory Coast’s government has laws against child trafficking. These laws are enforced within the country, but waver on the border between Ivory Coast and Mali, so children are often taken from Mali. Boys and girls are persuaded to go to Bouake, Ivory Coast by bus from Mali, promised a job for money to send the hungry families they left behind.

Once almost to the border, up to 300 miles from home, the children realize the danger of their travel and attempt to turn back at the next bus station. When they do try to run, traffickers on motorbikes follow, surround them and smuggle them across the border to a bus station where they are dropped, sold and taken to a farm.

“If you work slow, or refuse to work, they will beat you,” Langa Toure, a 15-year-old escaped plantation slave, reported to the documentarians. “We had to run at night and hide in holes so they wouldn’t find us until we made it out to the city.”

The world consumes nearly 3 million pounds of chocolate a year. The harvesting process noted above took up to six hours of unpaid child labor, and it only produced 40 chocolate bars.

All of this chocolate, which is harvested by unprotected children, is sold for cheap to big manufacturers such as Cargill, Nestle and Barry-Callebaut — Europe’s largest corporations — as well as Mars, Hershey and Kraft, which dominate the American candy industry. Then, it’s marked up for you, the consumer, to buy.

Exposure to this issue began in 2001 when the BBC researched the nonprofit group The Children’s Fund’s efforts in Mali and found the child trafficking issue there. News spread and drew negative attention to the corporations. U.S. Congress pressured the industry to make a change through legislation. The industry disagreed and preferred to handle the situation itself, establishing and giving a pledge in the Harkin-Engel Protocol.

At face value, the Harkin-Engel Protocol is impressive. The document clearly defines the issue, why it should be fixed and how the industry plans to go about fixing it. The document even includes a numbered step-by-step process to incorporate all cocoa processors, governments and industry brands to cooperate and end the problem by July 2002. It was signed by government officials of America, Europe, Scandinavia and Africa, as well as the presidents of chocolate producing companies like Hershey, Cargill and Nestle. It was never followed through.

The companies claimed the issue was difficult and that they needed more time. They were granted an extension in 2005 and again in 2008. At the end of the 2008 extension, the companies claimed they had ended child labor. News reports and documentaries show the opposite.

Frank Hagemann, director of the ILO International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour, an extension of the UN, reports, “Governments have been sensitized, and some knowledge has been put on the table. … In terms of real change, we have seen relatively little so far.”

In response to the evidence that these companies are still partaking in child slavery, one industry giant, Cargill, issued a statement claiming that “the vast majority of cocoa farms are not owned by the companies that make chocolate or supply cocoa and we therefore don’t have direct control over cocoa farming and labour practices.”

But, wasn’t the point of the whole ordeal with Congress and the Harkin-Engel Protocol to dive in and stop the industry’s support of these malpractices? It doesn’t appear a lot of effort has been made there. Thumbs down to the chocolate companies.

To show these corporations child labor is not tolerated, you can choose to go about chocolate supported by child labor and choose alternative treats to give out this Halloween, or any time of the year. Stickers, pencils, bookmarks — whatever would work as a party favor, really.

If planning to give candy this holiday, check the packaging. Near the nutrition facts you’ll find a statement about which company manufactured that treat. If you still prefer chocolates, Ghiradelli has stayed clear of child labor reports, or you can find fair trade options available in the health food section of most grocery stores.

Green America, a spearhead in the effort to pressure Hershey to quit buying from plantations that enslave children, has partnered with many fair-trade organizations to offer reverse trick-or-treating. For the price of shipping only, Green America will send you 15 fair trade chocolates and promotional materials to hand out instead of Hershey treats. To learn more, visit greenamerica.org.

We’re living in a capitalistic world. Where you can’t find a ballot, vote with your wallet.

Dylan Gette-King is a senior in high school. You can watch “The Dark Side of Chocolate” documentary at thedarksideofchocolate.org.