Cadbury eggs are a staple of the Easter holidays in the United States. The rest of the world knows them for their milk chocolate. Unfortunately, this chocolate company isn’t so sweet. According to media reports, Cadbury Chocolate has ties to child labor. It’s hard to imagine that something so sweet comes with such bitter truths. But it does.
The entire chocolate industry has origins in death, slavery, and imperialism. Chocolate farming has wreaked havoc on Mesoamerica and Africa, and Cadbury became part of this history when they entered the industry.
It would be easy to push past the early years of chocolate production if that were the end of the story. No chocolate comes from benevolent beginnings, but they also don’t need to continue these trends.
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Cadbury Chocolate’s Origins Seem Innocent on the Surface
While Cadbury Chocolate’s backstory is brighter than others, the source of their cocoa has been dark from the beginning.
John Cadbury and his brother started the Cadbury business in 1824. As Quakers, the Cadbury family practiced pacifism and opposed slavery. The Cadbury family even led a campaign against slavery in the Sao Tome islands at the turn of the 20th century. The family’s campaign effectively changed cocoa production on the islands.
Until the campaign, Cadbury’s cocoa didn’t align with the company’s moral principles as it was produced on slave plantations. Whether Cadbury knew it or not, this was the cocoa the company had purchased for nearly 70 years.
Allegedly, the Cadbury family didn’t know about the conditions at Sao Tome. We can’t verify the claim without a time machine, so we’ll take their word for it. Either way, the Cadbury Chocolate Company ended its relation with cocoa grown by slave in 1909, as one of the family’s charitable trusts explains.
The company needed to find another source for cocoa now that the slave-grown crop was off the table. In time, Cadbury Chocolate would do something nearly as bad as buying from the Sau Tomes.
Child Labor on Cocoa Farms in West Africa
The media has released numerous accounts of chocolate companies using child labor in cocoa farming over the past 50 years. This isn’t just a Cadbury Chocolate problem. It’s an industry problem.
Cocoa farming is only possible close to the equator in an area known as the “Cocoa Belt.” So, most chocolate manufacturers get their cocoa from Ivory Coast and Ghana.
With such a small area to farm, companies don’t have very many easy options. They’re stuck to West African areas like Ivory Coast and Ghana unless they want to raise their budget. And these areas use child labor in farming.
According to End Slavery Now, a publication dedicated to ending modern slavery, West African cocoa farms have a problem. Ivory Coast produces over a third of the world’s cocoa, and they use child labor to harvest a large portion of it. Ghana is right behind them in statistics, and this is where Cadbury sources most of its cocoa.
The media calls the child laborers “chocolate slaves” for a good reason. They do dangerous work with dangerous tools for little money. Observers have witnessed 10-year-olds harvesting cocoa with machetes for example.
Cadbury Chocolate has been sourcing its cocoa from these areas for a long time. Investigators continue to report on child labor tied to their product, but it isn’t ending the issue for Cadbury or anyone else.
Cadbury Chocolate Uses Child Labor to Source Its Chocolate
In 2021, the William A. Cadbury Charitable Trust released a letter apologizing for Cadbury using cocoa from slave plantations in the past. The letter also explains their commitment to ending racial inequalities. This would prove ironic.
The following year, a new report accused Cadbury of using child labor once again. But this wasn’t new. News outlets had published similar reports for decades.
In 2001, the chocolate industry promised to stop using cocoa grown with child labor. Cadbury was part of this agreement, though they never held to it. Instead, they adjusted the timeline every few years. Most recently, they pushed it back to 2020.
We know Cadbury missed the 2020 mark because of the 2022 report. And, it’s likely that Cadbury is still using cocoa from these areas three years later. No one will know that for sure, though, until investigators release the next report.
Only time will tell if Cadbury can put an end to these labor practices, and the outlook is bleak.
The Parent Company of Cadbury Chocolate Has Had Multiple Scandals
There are other skeletons in the Cadbury Chocolate closet besides child labor. The Cadbury family hasn’t owned the company for years, and their Quaker values must’ve left with them.
Mondelez International purchased Cadbury in 2010, and they’ve had multiple scandals since.
CNN reported that the European Union fined Mondelez over $350 million for rigging markets in Europe in 2024. The company was withholding product to keep the prices of chocolate and other goods high. It wasn’t a new scheme for Mondelez either. They’d been doing it for years. And, the list of violations for Mondelez doesn’t end there.
Good Jobs First’s Violation Tracker shows that Mondelez has violated regulations in many aspects of their business. Different authorities have fined the company for environmental and air pollution violations as well as price fixing. They also committed workers’ safety violations, consumer protection violations, and wage violations.
While we’re not going to tell you to avoid Cadbury Chocolate or Mondelez this Easter, we urge you to purchase chocolate with “Fair Trade” labels. Labels with detailed explanations of how the chocolate was sourced will do in a pinch, too. There are far more ethical companies out there for chocolate bars than Cadbury Chocolate.
