Whether it crunches, snaps, or melts– chocolate varieties have much of the same impact on global populations that harvest it. Human trafficking and child labour pervade the chocolate industry, with U.S. Department of Labour estimates citing over 2 million child labourers engaged in the dangerous task of harvesting cocoa beans. 

For me, hearing this is nothing new.

In 2015, I first engaged with a non-profit called Dressember-– a non-profit that seeks to eradicate human trafficking by calling attention to unethical fashion production. Dressember also raises awareness for other unethical industries. They even promote ethical alternatives to chocolate, coffee, and clothing brands. 

Infographic via dressember.org 

Despite knowing this, going into this contemplative practice was still even more difficult to process as I watched farmworkers taste for the first time the product that they didn’t even know was being produced from their labour. This produced a certain anxiety that I recognized immediately– if farmers don’t know where their product is going, and if populations largely don’t understand where it is coming from, how can we generate awareness for labour injustices like these? How can we promote more transparency in the supply chain to ensure human rights protections? These are things I wonder as I sit behind my screen, with the privilege of simply contemplating, allowing myself to entertain ideas of socially just practices. But how is this put into action?

Among increasingly conflicting ideas about globalization and “fair trade”, I found it hard to connect myself to an immediate solution during this exercise. The contemplative practice connected me to the true complexity of the issue. Damaging and unsustainable practices give me insight into the ecological blindness that companies operate with, but with child labour, this opens us to the ethical blindness that companies operate with, viewing human bodies and children as dispensable lives.