Tag: Senator Harkin

I am very disappointed but I should have expected it. Yesterday, in a joint statement with the Chocolate Industry, Senator Harkin and Congressman Engel basically ratified the very limited efforts of the industry to combat child labor in the cocoa sector. So, for all practical purposes, the crucial part of the 2001 Harkin-Engel protocol, that the industry establish a “credible, mutually acceptable, voluntary, industry-wide standards of public certification, consistent with applicable federal law, that cocoa beans and their derivative products have been grown and/or processed without any of the worst forms of child labor” is dead. Continue reading “A Sad Day for the Children of Cocoa Farmers”