Candy makers fire back on forced labor

Candy makers say they won’t stand in the way of an effort in Congress to end a decades-old statute that allows U.S. companies to import goods made with forced labor.

The National Confectioners Association (NCA) stormed Capitol Hill this week to correct what they called a mischaracterization of their stance after some lawmakers expressed concern that candy makers were calling to preserve the import exemption. 

The 1932 trade rule allows some products that are made by forced or child labor to enter the United States when demand outstrips the domestic supply.

{mosads}While the NCA stopped short of endorsing an end to the exemption, the group stressed that companies have not “utilized any provision of the more than 80-year-old customs law to import cocoa” for their products from West Africa.

“We’re working very hard to change the labor conditions in their region,” said Christopher Gindlesperger, the NCA’s vice president of government affairs.

Gindlesperger said that the group, which represents companies such as Hershey’s and Nestle, shares the frustrations of lawmakers about the ongoing problem of forced labor in West Africa, where 70 percent of the world’s cocoa is produced.

“We support efforts that will help end forced labor practices for all merchandise, goods, wares and commodities imported into the United States,” he said. 

To that end, candy-making companies have committed more than $100 million in resources and assistance to the region to meet basic infrastructure needs like building schools and educating farmers on the fair market value of their cocoa crops, Gindlesperger said.

“It is our hope that this conversation in the trade debate will encourage others to join us on our pursuit of improved labor conditions in cocoa-producing countries, and around the world.” 

Candy makers say they have also been working for years with the Labor Department, the governments of Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire, the World Cocoa Foundation, the International Cocoa Initiative and others to improve labor conditions in the cocoa supply chain. 

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) added the language ending the forced labor exemption into a customs enforcement bill, which easily passed the Senate on Thursday in a 78-20 vote.

“There is never, never a time when forced labor is acceptable,” Wyden said. “This is 2015, and there is absolutely no room in our trade policies for any exceptions to that principle.”

Wyden expressed concern earlier in the week after The New York Times reported that candy makers were pushing to keep the loophole in place, an aide said.

Brown has called the exemption “outdated” and “immoral.” 

Human rights groups argue that stopping products made by forced labor is nearly impossible with the exemption in place. 

John Sifton, a Human Rights Watch official who focuses on Asia, said that ending the loophole would be an “enormous help to us in combating forced labor and human trafficking.”

He said scrapping the provision would provide a great tool that could be used to document, track and stop the shipment products that are made by forced or child labor. 

Still, he said, there will have to be credible evidence that a product is made through illegal labor practices, which is often difficult to prove.  

The debate over products made with forced or child labor in the cocoa industry came to a head in 2001. 

At the time, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) made an agreement with the International Chocolate and Cocoa Industry to engage in rooting out and stopping forced and child labor. 

A December report by the International Labor Rights Forum — which was two years in the making — concluded that the “chocolate industry has begun to recognize the need for changes in supply chain accountability.”

But the positive effects of “myriad projects aimed at improving education, increasing productivity and implementing cocoa certification” have been “limited and the industry has been unable to solve the root cause of the problem: the very low prices paid to farmers,” the report added.