Who Makes Your Chocolate?

Valentine's Day is a big day for chocolate, and Congressman Eliot Engel wants to make sure consumers understand that those truffles you bought for that special someone might have been made by slaves.

"Chocolate is a common gift every year on February 14th. Unfortunately, there is a serious problem in the growing of cocoa. In places like the Ivory Coast, child slaves live in poverty and are forced to pick cocoa for chocolate companies," writes Engel in a letter to his constituents. The congressman notes the success of the Harkin-Engel Protocol, which created a new labeling system to indicate that no child slave labor was used in the harvesting of cocoa.

Engel added that the bill seeks to eliminate child slave labor in cocoa production by July 2008. "I will continue to monitor the chocolate industry and encourage them to meet their commitments under the Harkin-Engel Protocol to end the use of child slave labor in cocoa production.   It is my hope that one year in the not-too-distant future I will be able to report to you that chocolate is no longer produced with any child labor," writes Engel.