The Dark Side of Chocolate

Prizewinning investigative journalist Miki Mistrati decides to check rumors about child trafficking and illegal child labor in the chocolate industry. His hunt for answers brings him to Mali, where shocking hidden footage reveals illegal trafficking of small children to the cocoa fields in neighboring Ivory Coast. Kids as young as seven years of age work in the plantations, where they face a dangerous job cutting down the cocoa and carrying heavy loads. While leading manufacturers are busy persuading Miki that no children are working in the cocoa fields, Interpol raids several plantations and finds more than 60 children working at the farms. The Dark Side of Chocolate conflicts with the pictures painted by large international companies like Nestlé, Berry Callebaut and Mars who signed the Cocoa Protocol in 2001 promising to work for a total eradication of child labor in the cocoa sector by 2008. Two years after the protocols deadline, this film documents that child labor and trafficked children still is a burden to the cocoa industry.