On February 24, the workers rights group interviewed Ayn Riggs, the Director of Slave Free Chocolate. Slave Free Chocolate is a grassroots organization that does campaigns and educates on child labor in the chocolate industry.

Ayn has done a lot of research in this field, the reason we chose to interview her.

She had mentioned certain things that we hadn’t heard in previous interviews, which was very helpful. Other than the actual labor involved, she spoke on big companies finding loopholes and covering up what happens in their supply chains. There have been false claims made by large organizations such as Nestle, Mars and Hershey. There are also instances where they pretend to combat the problem, when truly they are exacerbating it. For example, the Supreme Court recently concluded that there was no basis for a lawsuit against Nestle. On the home page of the Slave Free Chocolate website (linked below), there is a list of reasons on why this conclusion was false.

Ayn also went into detail on how the kids are exploited, led in, and more about the experiences of the working children.

There was one business recommended we look into from previous interviews, Tony’s Chocoloney. Ayn said that they contradicted their own ideals. The company, which promotes no child labor used to farm cacao pods, holds ties with a company that uses that labor.

We learned a lot from Ayn, and it was clear she held a deep understanding on the topic. Thank you, Ayn Riggs, for your knowledge and dedication to the subject.

https://www.slavefreechocolate.org/