Major brands like Kellog’s, Starbucks, Walmart, General Mills and Hershey received abysmal scores while some of the most sustainable chocolate companies included more lesser known brands like Tony’s and Beyond Good. The effort to make major companies more transparent in how they source their products has been going on for years.
In 2016, consumers filed class-action lawsuits — meaning they grouped together the claims of all consumers — against Mars, Nestlé and Hershey. They argued that by failing to disclose the use of child labor in their supply chain, these companies were violating California’s consumer production laws.
The chocolate companies argued that they had no duty to disclose this fact under California law. They argued that disclosing the problems with child labor on their websites is enough — and the court agreed. Not exactly comforting for the consumer, is it? This problem is so widespread that three new consumer class actions were filed in Massachusetts in early 2018 against Hershey, Nestlé and Mars, again alleging the chocolate companies deceived consumers by not disclosing the presence of child labor in the sourcing of their cocoa.
You can look at labels to determine if it is slave-free or child labor-free. According to the website SlaveFreeChocolate.org, organic and fair-trade chocolate is almost always ethically grown, as is cocoa from outside West Africa. And you can look for these labels: Fairtrade Certified, Fair Trade Federation, Rainforest Alliance Certified, UTZ certified cocoa and Fair for Life.
Can change genders but can’t work. 😂