The Shady Chocolate Business

Investigative journalist Miki Mistrati stands outside Nestlé headquarters in Switzerland. Behind him visual evidence of trafficking and child slavery in the chocolate industry is being shown on a huge mobile screen. Miki has been trying to show the film to the big bosses at Nestlé but has had no luck so far. The police arrive and Miki must leave the area. Since these revelations were shown to consumers all over the world, the chocolate industry is now making statements on its websites and in the press. The spokesperson for the entire industry, Joanna Scott, asserts that the world’s biggest companies spend millions of dollars helping the children on the plantations to better lives, and that more than 40 programmes of education, building of schools, hospitals etc. are in operation in the Ivory Coast. But is this true? Miki goes to the Ivory Coast and Ghana and carries out a reality check only to discover that the truth is worse than expected. There is nothing to be found that resembles the description from the international corporate website, and kids are still working in the cocoa plantation from a very young age. The time has come for some answers from those responsible.