Washington Post - Cocoa's Child Laborers

“… the odds are substantial that a chocolate bar bought in the United States is the product of child labor.” There is a very dark side of chocolate that must change. And we can, together.
We invite all chocolate companies to follow our transparent Open Chain business model; to make 100% of the cocoa traceable, to pay a higher price on top of the fairtrade premium to enable a living income and to invest in long term contracts and quality.
“Tony’s sources 7,000 tons of cocoa, which is a tiny amount. . . . How scalable is that approach?” McCoy said. “I think it’s an open question.” Thank you for the open question Mr. McCoy, we have a very clear answer to that: Tony’s Chocolonely has proven that it is successful; both on impact (enabling a living income) and being a healthy, profitable company http://bit.ly/FAIRReport2018.
Tony’s has grown with double digits over the past years and became market leader in The Netherlands and is growing rapidly in the USA and across Europe. To scale our approach even harder, we invite all involved in the chocolate industry to have a look at our learnings, our tools and our numbers through tonysopenchain.com.
A large retailer, Albert Heijn (Ahold) just joined Tony’s Open Chain to eradicate modern slavery and child labor from the cocoa industry. Their private label will now also be sourced according to our 5 sourcing principles, allowing farmers to earn a living income by investing and paying a higher price on top of the fairtrade premium. Albert Heijn is our first mission ally, but we will announce more followers of our sourcing principles soon and all are invited to join. This is how we will scale with our approach, by sharing our knowledge with competitors. Yes, you read this right, competitors.. Cause only together, we’ll make 100% slave free the norm in the industry!
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Tony's FAIR 2020
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Order in the court, equality in the supply chain
November 30, 2020 Big Choco vs forced child laborers: how will the US Supreme court decide?
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Don’t kid yourself about child labor
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