For twenty years businesses, governments, NGOs, and activists have been working towards bettering our world in the realm of climate change, labor rights, food security, soil health, etc. But despite the thousands of business-driven initiatives, thousands of NGO projects, new laws, and citizens doing their best, no area has shown any improvement. A glaring void hampering progress is that none of the data used by food companies is verified. What is real? What is Brandwashing? Who the heck knows? Take chocolate as an example, there are many ethical chocolate companies that are running their businesses ethically the whole way through. But there isn’t a chocolate company out there that doesn’t claim to be ethical and sustainable. So then, who is complicit for the 1.6 million exploited children in the industry? Who benefitted from destroying the vital rainforest? At the end of the day does Brandwashing win over progress? Not if I can help it! It is paramount that the food industry adopts a labeling system that is based on independent primary data collected by unvested scientists. In other words, we all should be operating on an agreed food metric that is based on the truth. By “we” I mean, investors, financial institutions, and consumers. Fortunately, there is one. OmniAction has created the OmniLabel. I, Ayn Riggs, director of Slave Free Chocolate, have opened the US office of OmniAction. For more information, please either contact Slave Free Chocolate and/or visit OmniAction.
Please Customs and Border Protection, DO YOUR JOB!!!
The US Customs and Border Protection Agency is sitting on something that could really help.
The Department of Labor has cocoa listed as a child labor and forced child labor commodity. The industrial chocolate industry knows this as they clearly admit it is part of their supply chain and promised to clean this up in 2001 when it signed the Harkin Engel Protocol. Unfortunately, it hasn’t. Despite a slew of paltry initiatives, no positive change as been recorded. What has been documented by the Department of Labor is that the number of exploited children in the cocoa sector of Ghana and The Ivory Coast has risen.
But get this, the US Customs and Border Patrol Agency is supposed to issue an embargo and halt the import of these beans. It’s law. But despite and endless amount of outreach including a detailed petition, they haven’t done their job.
Below are the screen shots to a response that International Rights Advocates receive over 2 years after they filed a detailed petition.
After working on this issue for 16 years now, I really believe that halting these beans would help inspire the complicit industrial chocolate companies to fulfill the promises they not only gave to these children but the rest of the world.
Ayn Riggs
Director Slave Free Chocolate
