EASTER is less than two weeks away and the supermarket shelves are full of chocolate eggs – with Britain’s best-loved brand, Cadbury’s, leading the pack.
Their classic creme egg is a seasonal favourite – with 200million sold every year – and each one comes with the Cocoa Life stamp, to reassure consumers that the ingredients are ethically sourced.
But Channel 4’s Dispatches – which airs tonight – has uncovered shocking child labour abuses behind our chocolate treats and, for the first time, linked them directly to the Cadbury supply chain.
During his investigation in Ghana, West Africa, reporter Antony Barnett met children as young as 10 performing backbreaking work on cocoa farms in the blazing heat, for up to nine hours a day.
Small children wielding 3ft machetes hack through tough weeds, with no protective clothing, or crack pods with long sharp knives – and many sustain serious injuries from the hazardous work.
And Antony found desperate farmers were paid less than £2 a day for the cocoa they sold to Mondelez, the US company that now owns Cadbury.
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