Bitter Chocolate

Bitter chocolate: investigating the dark side of the world’s most seductive sweet is a book by Carol Off which takes into great account of the prisoners of an industry which was made of innocence and sweetness but in it, it hid a very dark and a reality which was very cruel. She did so by tracing the origins of cocoa craze and all that followed the evolution of chocolate under some overseers like Mars, Cadbury, and Hershey (Off, 2007).

She was very broad in bringing out the fact that the children in West African nations like Côte d’Ivoire which is the main producer of about a half of the cocoa beans in the whole world have never tasted the original taste of the chocolate. This is because of the civil war backdrop and corruption which existed in the country which led to the farmers who were very poor to engage in the practices which were not appalling like the indentured servitude of young children and especially the young boys. These children were forced to work and others moved to the country in search of jobs which led to more unethical practiced like child trafficking. This led to criminal activity where children were often picked up and then taken to the Ivory Coast to work as laborers were they were sold off where child trafficking had greatly developed in the Western African countries (Off, 2007).

The only problem is that for the children who have been sold off to work on these cocoa farms in West Africa have no idea of what the cocoa beans that they cultivate are used for because a majority of them upon being questioned they had no idea of what the cocoa beans that they cultivated were used for (Off, 2007).

Child labor practices ought to be stopped by motivating the farmer by paying a good price for the cocoa beans so that the families can be able to sustain themselves and take the children to school so that they can also be able to get education. This better price can be ensured through the formation of cooperatives and legal governments which can help the farmer to stop being exploited and also stop the child trafficking acts which have been noticed to be a big problem in the West African countries since these children deserves to be in school not in farms working their heads off. Carol in her book brought out the case of a multi-billion industry which institutionalized misery as it helped serve pleasures to others at the cost of innocent African children.