Kate Nicholl

Electronics has joined the long list of industries enjoying the gross profits afforded through the high prices of retailing their products and the low costs of production. Searching the world for the lowest cost materials and labour makes good business sense but really – at what human cost?

 

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This week we had the pleasure of meeting with Carolyn and Fuzz Kitto, co-directors of the Australian arm of ‘Stop The Traffik’

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Greenpeace is now beginning to focus on human rights violations in the supply chain.

In this week’s blog post we want to share a powerful report published by green peace exposing the truth about human rights violations in the Thai fishing industry, the tuna industry in particular. Its been widely reported for years that there is a myriad of human trafficking, forced labour and child labour in the workforce that harvests and processes tea, cotton, cocoa and coffee. Now the seafood industry is just emerging as an as another suspect. It’s not just Thailand either, the associated press won a journalism award recently for their work in uncovering the truth about slavery in the Indonesian fishing industry and the subsequent release of 2000 workers in forced labour conditions. You can read more about this here

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It’s a normal Sunday in the Nicholl household, pouring over newspapers and world events, household chores and the neverending meandering of my forever active mind. Because I’m too lazy to buy a dryer after just having moved house, I’m currently in the Laundromat waiting for my sheets to dry and listening to the sound of my own thoughts. Example internal dialogue transcript: Who actually carries $20 worth of $1 coins these days? I wonder if the lady in the IGA would be cross if I asked her for change for the dryer without buying anything. Must call dad to arrange fathers day events... My legs hurt from the gym…. But amongst the randomness, what I was really thinking about was about an article in The Age on Saturday, ‘Consumers in the dark on seafood origins’.

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It has been well reported over the last 15 years that child labour issues are a grave concern in the cocoa supply chain.

Last week we wrote a detailed report on how this came to be an issue, what has been done to date and what the ethical options are for chocolate lovers.This week we want to share an interview with Peter Millard, supply chain manager for Australian chocolate brand Haighs, and their journey to becoming 85% ethically certified in their sourcing of cocoa – a massive achievement in the face of a very challenging and complex global issue.

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Nestle has announced a big step in their ethical sourcing journey by announcing that kit kats and milo are now produced with cocoa that is 100% ethically certified.

This post is part one in a two-series post, the second post will outline in more detail the good, the bad, and the better options for your ethical chocolate consumption - we’ll do the research for you!

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Chocolate has become one of the biggest hot button ethical sourcing issues in the last 15 years due to the widespread use of child labour in the Western African locations that supply the majority share of the world’s cocoa.  It sounds far from home to us here in Australia, but let me share with you some staggering statistics. In July, Tulane University released a research report commissioned by the US Department of Labour on child labour in the cocoa industry, with the finding that there are still 3.73 million labourers aged 5-17 working in the cocoa fields of Cote d’Ivoire alone, an increase of 5% since the previous report commission in 2008/09.

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Ever since the Nanna’s berries fiasco earlier on in the year, I find I have been looking at my food differently.

I have been buying things from the supermarket and I have been thinking, where has this been, who has touched it and how do you pronounce some of these ingredients? As a supply chain professional, it’s started me looking more closely at where the materials that go into our products originate.

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