Ethical Dilemma of Buying Some Common Products.

Posted by Alex in Everything Else on December 30, 2006 at 12:33 pm


If you think that buying diamond is an ethical dilemma, read this Foreign Policy article about the ethical issues of several common products.

Take for example, chocolate:

Beware of: Cocoa powder

The cost: Child labor. Seventy percent of the world’s cocoa (and most of the United States’) comes from West Africa, where nearly 300,000 children under the age of 14 toil in dangerous conditions on cocoa plantations. In the Ivory Coast, where more than half of the region’s cocoa is produced, more than 100,000 children work in near slavery, subject to both injury from the machetes used to harvest the plant and from toxic pesticides that are banned in the United States and Europe.

Link - via reddit


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COMMENT

6 comments to "Ethical Dilemma of Buying Some Common Products."

  1. Paul
    December 30th, 2006 at 12:49 pm

    Yeah, don’t buy cocoa anymore. Those 300,000 people would be better off without any income whatsoever, so help eliminate the market for one of the few economically viable crops they can grow.

    South American cocoa production has plummeted due to a fungus that is decimating the cocoa plant. Ask the former cocoa farmers and their children in South America how it’s going without a crop to sell.

  2. Paul
    December 30th, 2006 at 12:50 pm

    And I’m not saying that those kids wouldn’t be better off in school. I’m just saying it isn’t a perfect world.

  3. Andrew
    December 30th, 2006 at 2:28 pm

    Paul - no one buys it and a few kids starve, but the system gets fixed long term.

  4. Denita TwoDragons
    December 30th, 2006 at 6:48 pm

    Yeah, Andrew–it gets “fixed” when the kids are forced to grow something more lucrative instead–like, oh, say, opium poppies or coca plants.

    *rolls eyes*

    –TwoDragons

  5. Moon
    December 30th, 2006 at 7:56 pm

    I think the key term here is “children under the age of 14 in DANGEROUS conditions.

    Or did you skip that part?

  6. Denita TwoDragons
    December 31st, 2006 at 12:30 am

    Look, I’m not advocating child-labor or unsafe procedures, OK? I’d rather someone fix the chocolate industry, rather than ban it. Because if you ban it, you’re not “fixing” anything. The poor kids will just end up being put to work doing something illegal and even MORE deadly.

    –TwoDragons


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