This is a totally normal thing to find on your food's packaging

I like the styling that makes it look like

We’re “slave free” chocolate

That was intentional, because they can't guarantee that it wasn't actually made by slaves.
- Or made from slaves.
We're "more or less slave free as long we don't ask our suppliers too many questions" chocolate!
- To be fair, they usually have auditors, but the farms get so much advanced notice they can clean up their act on the day of
I'm sure that was deliberate
wink wink
It's because even brands that go out of their way trying to exclude farms that use slave labor can't guarantee that every farm they work with is slave free, because a lot of the time the slaves themselves lie about their info out of fear of losing the income or provisions, so it takes A LOT relative to how much checking can be afforded for each individual farm to 100% guarantee "these guys aren't using slaves"

What's with the quotation marks? Is the wink implied?

The region of Africa where the cocoa plant is harvested is so chaotic that it's impossible to say 100% that no slaves, children, or even child slaves are used in the farming process. There's a documentary that follows UN workers onto farms and they ask the kids working how old they are and every single one says 21+ when they don't even look like they're 16, and the reporter is like "it's impossible to tell" since most of these people were born out in a village and don't get a birth certificate until they are around 10+ years old, and then it's just the doctor asking them how old they are and when is their birthday.
- don't get a birth certificate until they are around 10+ years old, and then it's just the doctor asking them how old they are and when is their birthday.
  So you're telling me all I need to do to get a fake identity is go to a doctor in a village and Africa and pay them to write a birth certificate for me?
- So what the hell is stopping people from simply growing it in other countries, like the U.S.?

Wow, lots of people in this thread trying to make sure we don't blame capitalism for all the slavery being done at the behest of capitalists making products to sell in capitalist countries. You can't blame all slavery on capitalism but you can blame a hell of a lot of it on capitalism.

Slave free but made by American Child Labor™

As opposed to American Prison Labor, which is fine, as stated in the unchangeable constitution in the 13th amendment.
American desperate separated refugee child labour
Ftfy

Holy fuck, the "slave free" part is in quotes. It's literally in quotes. Technically they are not slaves. They get paid a penny every quarter, and we beat them if they don work, but technically they can walk out and starve to death anytime the want.

As I grow older I see Willy Wonka more and more as a documentary about the working conditions in the Nestle supply chain
- We're all Oompa Loompas.

Yeah, because slavery started with the invention of capitalism.

What if I told you the economic system has very little to do with it. If anything, free market + customer awareness (this is the most important piece) can help eliminate it, like shown here.

But the reason this is advertised is because the big names in chocolate use slavery, and while customers are aware of it, they don't really care enough to change their spending habits. It's common knowledge that our chocolate uses slaves, our phones and shoes use child labor, etc, but we don't have the financial stability to alter our purchasing habits to avoid them, and honestly, most people don't really care about harm coming to someone they don't know in another county, so long as they're still able to buy the products they want.
And it's not just harm to others we can't/don't avoid - from tech, to food, to clothing, companies are charging more money for worse products, but we continue giving them record profits. In the end, the vast majority of consumers allow companies to do whatever they want; giving the companies less regulation and/or putting out even more documentaries to teach people about the atrocities they commit isn't going to change those people's behavior.
- It unfortunately isn't common knowledge. You'd be surprised at the sheer amount of people who aren't aware of many things outside of their own neighborhood, much less in other countries.
- Yes, but the countries with other economic systems are ones that actually run the slavery. At least here a consumer has a say (if they care), and we also have regulations that can mandate things like that.
- Ths countries with slave labor that is used generally are not very capitalist.
- Yes because the slave labor in China no one is making any money from that at all.
I don't think the problem highlighted by this post is slavery itself. But the fact they are advertising slave free chocolate like it's a good thing or something to be proud of. When it's in fact the minimum in a civilised society, but still most of the chocolate manufacturers have slave forces somewhere along their chain supply.

See this is like if a restaurant put up a sign that said "We do NOT jack off into the claw chowder"

I didn't think you were, but now that you specifically deny it, I'm suspicious.

More like 'We do NOT "jack off" into the clam chowder'
Or when fruit juice explicitely has a vegan label on it. Uh, I would hope so.
Is that why it's called Jack in the Box?

Here's your daily reminder that there are more slaves now than there have ever been in recorded human history.

And that they make up a lower proportion of all humans than at any point in recorded human history.
It's a big problem but it's one that people are putting a lot of effort into solving.
- Is penal slavery counted? Because if not, you can add about 5 million from the US alone.
- I'm sure the people in slavery are really happy that slavery is at its lowest level per capita in recorded human history!
  But yeah it is such a big problem we need a lot of effort in solving. It's not like you just can't enslave people or anything. Gosh I hope people come up with something eventually because I can't think of one dang solution to this big ol problem.
To clarify, a higher total number, not a higher per Capita/percentage. Also, while modern slavery is definitely terrible, it also is very different from how most people I think conceptualize slavery, like chattel slavery.
That is not what that article is saying. All of their data is on modern slavery, not all of recorded human history. 1 in 150 people equals 0.67%. If you take just the slaves in the US and the serfs in Russia in 1860 (4m and 27m respectively) against the estimated world population in 1860, that made up 2.25% of the population. This doesn't include any other slaves in the rest of the world at the time.
So yes, modern slavery is increasing and is an important issue. No, there are not more slaves now than ever before.
- The UN taskforce report clearly states that there are more slaves now than ever before. Personally, I don't think that this is an issue that should be justified with ratios.
There are 7+ billion people on Earth as opposed to ~2 billion in 1960, so factor that in.

At least they aren't lying when saying "slave free" instead of regular slave free without the quotation marks.

The flavor is in the suffering

It's good they're trying vaguely at least 🤷.

I don't think this is capitalism exactly. The Chinese and Russians certainly do their own forms of slavery (fishing boats, gulags etc).

There's more slaves in the world now than at any prior time. Lack of education (kids not in school too), poverty and wild birth rates are probably the biggest factors here, particularly in Africa.

The west can exert a lot of pressure here for good:

Subsidized education requirements for export countries (or import levies)
Break up chocolate monopolies
Living minimum wages
Independent monitoring
Practical health programs

The US engages in domestic slavery too.
The 13th amendment has a very convenient loophole:
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
It is one of the many reasons, perhaps the largest reason why African Americans are incarcerated at 6 times the rate of White Americans, on a national average.
Yet people still don't believe systemic racism exists.

I have to wonder what the ratio is for us transferring our bad practices to other parts of the world, to the other parts of the world playing catch up to us in the terms of the industrial revolution which saw us practice many of these same things early on.

I think of the coal mine workers in the 1600s in England and later on in the Americas. They were horrible situations to endure and that's one *small example. Most of early life of those moving from the rural areas to the city was not kind either. Child labor was a big part of the equation along with slavery.

I'm sure there's also a large part of the western world just transferring their bad for the local environment processes to these places too. I just wonder what the ratio is.

I literally just watched a John Oliver thing about chocolate where he pointed out that label (and two others) don't even really check that they are, in fact, slave/child/cruelty free.