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

That was intentional, because they can't guarantee that it wasn't actually made by slaves.

We're "more or less slave free as long we don't ask our suppliers too many questions" chocolate!

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"

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.

As I grow older I see Willy Wonka more and more as a documentary about the working conditions in the Nestle supply chain

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

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?

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.

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.

There are 7+ billion people on Earth as opposed to ~2 billion in 1960, so factor that in.

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.

They don’t put slaves into chocolate.

The flavor is in the suffering

I post a lot, but I rarely post political stuff, because it's usually not the kind of content I find funny or enjoyable. I figure I'm probably not alone in that.

On the rare occasion that I post a political meme, I always make a point to drop it in a community for people who have sought it out, like this one. Out of my 1.6k posts on Lemmy so far, I'd be surprised if I've posted here more than 10 times.

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.

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.

free market capitalism benefits hugely from slavery. No wages to pay, no workers benefits, etc. and no matter how aware people are, as long as they can get their products, they won't care about how they are made.

Greatly exacerbated by capitalism, to the point that it's fair to say it's caused by capitalism

Also, capitalism makes us less cognizant of our supply chain, not more

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.

jesus christ, some of you seem to be unaware that current Russia is very capitalistic Also, as someone from a third world country, the west is not interested in any of that

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.

Or the continuation of long-standing practices in these regions. Slavery, after all, long predates the Industrial Revolution. We're more responsible for encouraging the continuation than transferring the practice.

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.

A lot of it is that we're willing to pay profitable prices for raw materials, which encourages dependence on primary sector activities (extraction, like agriculture and mining) which are labor intensive and very vulnerable to exploitation. A lot of these slave-labor type undertakings work in a pretty machinery-minimal way, since that's how the value of slave labor is maximized, rather than being advanced-but-polluting.