Sunday, December 2, 2012

Chocolate: Ivory Coast Child Trafficking

                           


We spend more on chocolate each year than investors spend on gold - but as Easter approaches, how much do we really know about where it comes from or how it is made?

Panorama reporter Paul Kenyon goes undercover as a cocoa trader in West Africa and discovers children as young as seven working long hours on cocoa farms, helping to make the chocolate we love so much. He buys a tonne of cocoa made with child labour, and sees how easy it is to sell it into the supply chain which leads to our high streets.

He also helps rescue a 12-year-old boy - trafficked across borders - to pick cocoa as a modern-day slave and reunites him with his mother. For the first time, we meet the kids who harvest our cocoa but who have never tasted chocolate.

Tracing the bitter truth of chocolate and child labour, Panorama reporter Paul Kenyon poses as a cocoa dealer to uncover the extent of child labour in the chocolate trade.


BBC Panorama Investigation, recorded 08.05.2010