jay plemons (@jayplemons) “MrBeast reveals Big Chocolate using 1.5M+ kids in illegal child labor on cacao f” — TopicDigg

MrBeast reveals Big Chocolate using 1.5M+ kids in illegal child labor on cacao farms 🍫 “There’s 1.5 to 1.8 million kids working in illegal child labor on cacao farms in West Africa, where majority of the world’s cacao comes from. I had no idea how bad it was until I started a chocolate company. It’s been normalized for decades in the chocolate industry. Big Chocolate pays farmers so little that they just can’t afford to not use children.” “When I asked distributors if I could pay a premium and not have little kids work on my farms, it literally didn’t exist. No one really seemed to even think it needed to exist.” “So we went to five villages that the average child labor there was like 45%. Seven months later we were able to get a 90% reduction and get it to where there are only around 50 still in child labor with our first check-in.” “There literally wasn’t a school because kids just worked on the farm. So we built a school so they could go to school. The goal isn’t just to get the kids out of child labor. It’s also to get them an education so they’re not only working on a cacao farm and doomed to work on it their whole life, because they don’t know anything else.”