Nestlé probe into child labour on its cocoa farms

The world’s biggest food company, Nestlé, is to work with a United States-based charity to investigate child labour on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast that supply its factories.

It is joining the Fair Labour Association (FLA), an international group, to probe cocoa fields that supply its products.

Ivory Coast produces 35 per cent of the world’s cocoa. Its coffee and cocoa sectors account for 15 per cent of GDP, and its cocoa production hit a record 1.48 million tons last year, despite a political crisis that almost brought civil war.

Last year, a report for the US labour department said 1.8 million children aged 5 to 17 worked on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast and Ghana.

Campaigners and academics hope the new strategy might make a difference. “If it’s really an independent investigation of the supply chain, it would be a good thing,” said Flurina Doppler of the Swiss-based Berne Declaration, one of the groups that has criticised chocolate makers for letting child labour continue.

Unicef estimates 35,000 Ivorian children working on cocoa farms are victims of trafficking, but the FLA thinks it could be far higher. “One of the things I’m scared we’re going to find is a lot of trafficked kids,” FLA president Auret van Heerden said.