The cocoa industry, facing criticism for not moving fast enough to stomp out child labour, will launch a pilot monitoring system in West Africa next month with hopes of sweetening chocolate's tainted image.
"The launch of the monitoring system in the Ivory Coast is affecting over 80,000 children, and that is a major step," Susan Smith, a spokeswoman for the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, told Reuters.
The pilot launch is in November. "It is the first time that a system like this has been implemented. Ultimately, we are trying to reach 1.5 million small farms," Smith said.
Reports of trafficked children used to work on West African cocoa farms had prompted the global chocolate industry and a coalition of labour rights groups to pledge to put an end to abusive and hazardous child labour.
In 2001, the coalition introduced a protocol to develop industry-wide labour standards and to provide transparent monitoring of the industry's supplier farms. A deadline of July 2005 had been set to launch a certification system.
Advocacy groups have criticised the coalition for moving too slowly and using inadequate monitoring methods.
"None of their recent statements indicate that they are even a step closer to having a real, credible and transparent systematic monitoring system," said Bama Athreya of International Labour Rights Fund.
"And they are not going to get it by 2005," she said.
Smith acknowledged the work has been slow and fraught with challenges. "We fully believe a system will be in place and tested in different situations. Whether it reaches across the country by July 2005, it may not - probably not."
North Americans and Europeans consume nearly two-thirds of all cocoa product imports, while about 70 percent of the world's crop is grown in West Africa.
For the past two years, farmers in Ivory Coast picked just shy of a 1.4 million tonne record set in 1999/2000, despite a civil war that has been patched up by a shaky peace process. The CMA - which has members like Archer Daniels Midland Co and Nestle SA - and its partners are working with the International Labour Organisation, Ivory Coast's government and local non-governmental groups, Smith said.
About 109,000 children work in hazardous conditions in Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, according to a 2003 US State Department report. Hazards include harmful pesticides and the risk of injury from machetes.
The protocol aims to distinguish between abused child workers from kids on farms helping with the family harvest, said Bill Guyton, president of the World Cocoa Foundation, a signatory of the protocol and a CMA affiliate.
"There is a difference between child work and child labour. These programmes explain the differences between those and look at different kinds of prevention and action to take if there are situations where there are problems," he said.
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