Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver,
thank you so much for joining us.
It has been a busy week.
Israel's w*r with Hamas continued,
with hundreds of hostages
still unaccounted for,
while the country continues
its bombing campaign in Gaza.
In Washington, Republicans chose
a new House speaker, Mike Johnson,
a man with resting
assistant principal face.
Very little was known
about Johnson before this week.
Senator Susan Collins said "I was
going to Google him this morning".
But when people actually started
doing that, the results weren't great.
Before entering office,
Johnson called abortion
"a holocaust that has been
repeated every day for 32 years,
since 1973's Roe versus Wade".
As a congressman,
he's co-sponsored at least three bills
that would ban
the procedure nationwide.
Johnson is also staunchly
anti-gay rights.
In 2004, he called h*m*
"inherently unnatural"
and voted against
legalizing same-sex marriage.
Yep, pretty bad.
Although, let's face it,
it's not like the new Republican
speaker wasn't going to have
a laundry list
of horrifying opinions.
It'd be more surprising if he threw
a couple of good ones in there, too.
"He believes abortion is a holocaust,
Friday should be part of the weekend,
gay marriage is inherently unnatural,
we need more women in STEM,
and there should be parks
where adults can ride
down the giant inflatable slide
they use when planes crash."
I'm sure there will be more to say
about Johnson going forward,
so for now,
we're going to turn to Argentina.
Birthplace of both the Pope,
and the actual God.
Argentina is suffering
a severe economic crisis,
with inflation
running close to 140%.
It held its presidential election
last Sunday,
and as no candidate won outright,
there'll now be a runoff
between the top two candidates.
One is the center-left finance minister
whose government
has been widely blamed
for the current financial crisis.
And the other, Javier Milei,
who, yes, does look like this,
you know what,
I'll just let him introduce himself.
Hi! I'm General Ancap.
I come from Liberland.
My mission
is to kick the ever-loving sh*t
out of Keynesian and collectivist
f*ckers trying to ruin our lives.
Yeah, just a classic,
run-of-the-mill presidential candidate,
dressed like Mr. Peanut
dressed as a wizard dressed as Batman,
pledging to kick
the sh*t out of Keynesians.
If I had one note
for that superhero, though,
it's that John Maynard Keynes
probably isn't the most
compelling super-nemesis.
Few economists are.
There is a reason that the Avengers
fought Thanos and not Alan Greenspan.
But Milei is a lot. General Ancap
is presumably a reference
to his political philosophy
of anarcho-capitalism,
"a strand of libertarianism
that seeks to abolish the state
in favor of unfettered free markets."
And he campaigned on heavy cuts,
suggesting slashing public spending
by 15% of GDP
and eliminating most taxes.
He also has a controversial plan
to swap the country's currency
for the U.S. dollar,
has said he wants to "blow up"
the central bank,
and has even smashed models
of it in campaign videos,
and also in pinata form on TV.
He's also symbolized
his desire to slash the government
by waving chainsaws
around in public,
an image his supporters have run with,
wearing chainsaw masks to vote for him,
and even while doing interviews.
The fight continues
for Javier Milei,
far-right populist who wants
to see spending slashed.
The chainsaw
has become a symbol of this pledge.
Milei is something different
that hasn't been tested before.
Not to break my one rule and argue
with a guy dressed as a chainsaw,
but lots of ideas
haven't been tested before.
We also haven't tried all-trampoline
retirement homes,
or letting a raccoon
be chief of surgery.
That's because some ideas are bad,
and I would argue maybe giving control
of the third-largest economy
in Latin America
to a guy who looks like he was
escorted out of a Comic-Con panel
for asking Scarlett Johansson
too many questions
might well be one of them.
And it's not just his costumes
and props that are colorful,
take this talk show interview,
where he goes into more detail
about his sex life
than you are possibly expecting.
In tantra, less than 45 minutes is
considered premature ejaculation.
- Less than how much?
- 45 minutes.
Each man has his own dynamic.
In my particular case,
I ej*cul*te once every three months.
That's incredible.
Is it?
Is it incredible?
I think it might actually
be extremely credible.
I completely believe that the guy
we saw screaming at dead economists,
smashing miniature banks on TV,
and waving a chainsaw in the streets
may be a little, and I'm sorry
for saying this, backed up.
And then there is Milei's obsession
with his dogs.
He's happily posed
for glamour photos with them
and held up a portrait
gifted by one of his supporters.
Just watch as this interview
on a talk show gets totally derailed
when he sees a photo
of his dog, Conan.
You don't need to know
what is being said here,
I promise,
you will pick up the gist of it.
Okay, that is pretty likable.
He just got distracted by his own dog
the way dogs get distracted
by any squirrel.
It's honestly hard for me
to criticize that
because that's also how I respond
if I ever see a picture of…
It's Conan!
It's Conan!
We all love things to the extent
that they completely distract us,
whenever they happen to appear…
It's Conan!
It's Conan!
What I'm saying is, it's understandable
that Milei struggled to pay attention,
considering what was being…
it's Conan!
Conan!
Quit staring at me, John!
I'm not a piece of meat!
No, of course not. I'm sorry, Conan.
I truly apologize.
Anyway, like I said,
the things we love can be distracting.
So, it is clear
Milei loves his dogs.
But you should know,
while I've been saying "dogs",
I really should
have just said "dog",
because all of them are genetic copies
of his one former dog, Conan.
And the story gets even weirder.
Because he calls his cloned dogs,
of which there are at least four,
"the best strategists in the world,"
and according to one biographer,
trusts them to a genuine fault.
The dogs he has now
are divided into a sort of cabinet.
He also believes that Conan,
the dog that d*ed,
has reincarnated
in one of the clones.
That dog helps him, and I quote
"With the general strategy".
Then Murray advises him
in economics,
and Lucas is the one that helps him see
the future and learn from his mistakes.
It's almost
like an official cabinet.
At this point,
I feel the need to tell you,
we didn't invent this man
for this show.
I get how an anarcho-capitalist,
chainsaw-brandishing,
dog-cloning presidential candidate
who looks like a waterlogged
Billie Joe Armstrong
and sees his dogs
as some sort of clairvoyant,
reincarnated force functioning
as a political cabinet
could seem like he was tailor-made,
in a lab, specifically for this show.
But he wasn't.
His dogs were, but he wasn't.
This is a distressingly real person.
And while there is something very funny
about a politician who workshops
his ideas with his four dog,
it gets less fun when
you see what those ideas are.
Because he's called for "expanding g*n
ownership and outlawing abortion,"
referred to global
warming as a "socialist lie",
has called Tr*mp "one of the best
presidents in the history of the US",
and described the Pope
as an "embarrassing communist",
a "piece of sh*t" and a "potato".
I know we weren't expecting
the man with a bunch of cloned dogs
and a onceper-quarter jizz schedule
to have good opinions.
But those are strikingly bad.
And Milei has a lot of support,
particularly from young men.
And the thing is,
a desire for some sort of radical
change in Argentina is understandable,
given the depths
of the country's financial crisis.
People's earnings
and savings have been wiped out,
and around 40% of Argentines
are living in poverty.
Things are really bad there.
Milei's opponent
is the current finance minister,
so he is tied pretty closely to it.
It's no wonder that some Argentines,
like this woman voting last Sunday,
are pretty depressed
about the options in front of them.
We don't have
a really good option.
I didn't came here
and said I know who I'm going to vote.
I was like,
I don't really know,
because nothing is,
and I believe that nothing is good.
When your options
are more of the same
or emo edgelord
Tucker Carlson here,
it is understandable
to believe that nothing is good.
And unfortunately,
the worse things get in Argentina,
the easier it is for Milei
to make the case that any change,
no matter how untested or dangerous,
is better than the current system.
So, while I agree Argentines
deserve something new,
I also think they deserve
a lot better than this chainsaw-wielding,
backed-up superhero
and his Xeroxed dog quartet.
And now, this!
And Now:
Dagen McDowell Seems Like
She Was a Fun Kid.
- I was a Girl Scout, briefly.
- That's nice.
- I was kicked out of the Girl Scouts.
- There's a story there.
I was very vocal.
I would share my stories
about being a Girl Scout,
if I hadn't been kicked out of the
Girl Scouts for being too mouthy.
I was kicked out of the Girl Scouts
for being too mouthy.
I got kicked out of the Girl Scouts.
I didn't think it was all that cool.
They made me go to a Jimmy Carter
speech when he was the president.
I got kicked out of the Girl Scouts
'cause they made us go see Jimmy
Carter speak when he was president
and I bitched about it.
They made me go
hear Jimmy Carter speak.
- And I was very vocal about that.
- Even at that age.
I got kicked out of the Girl Scouts,
'cause I fussed
about them making me go
hear Jimmy Carter speak
when he was the president.
A quick confession. Geraldo,
the thing about sleeping like this,
'cause you're afraid
of vampires biting your neck?
I still do that.
Moving on.
Our main story tonight
concerns chocolate.
The star attraction
in Neapolitan ice cream.
Nothing against vanilla
and strawberry,
it's just that one is a euphemism
for boring sex,
and the other is fruit,
and fruit is simply not dessert.
Chocolate is the greatest. Watch
as this baby gets a first taste of it.
I know. Okay, one more!
Really big one.
Ready? You ready?
Yeah, baby! Same!
And I hope it savors
that chocolate high.
Because I think we all know,
the rest of human experience
is pretty much downhill
from there.
Everybody loves chocolate,
that is why we use it for everything,
from beauty products,
to sculptures, to breakfast cereal.
Although some arguably
love it a little too much,
like the host of this cooking show.
There's a component,
a substance in chocolate
called phenylethylamine
and what that fancy word does
is it slightly elevates your blood
pressure and your heart rate,
and they tell me that it's a sensation
that's not unlike having an orgasm.
I don't know!
Maybe that's why people love
chocolate so much,
but, anyway,
let me get back to our step here.
What a long, weird way to tell people
that you've never had an orgasm.
Second, I can't believe
there is a chemical
that makes your brain horny
and they named it "phenylethylamine".
That is not a sexy name.
"Erotisol." "Seductilust."
"Dat-assoline."
All of those are free
and available.
To be very clear, eating chocolate
is nothing like having an orgasm.
Unless you count the fact
that when boys do it, it is messier.
But chocolate
isn't just making people horny,
it's also making a lot of money.
Globally,
it's a $140 billion a year industry,
and at this point, you might
be sitting at home thinking,
"Hold on,
I've seen this show before.
This feels like it's gonna be
one of the fun stories,
but is it about to take a turn?
I've got a jumbo bag
of fun-size Snickers
that I'm gonna be handing out
to tiny Iron Men, Elsas, and Luigis
in around 48 hours; are you going
to make that weird for me?"
Yes, I am.
And also, don't bullshit me.
Half that bag is gonna be gone
by Halloween, and you know it.
But the reason
this is about to take a turn is,
for all the money
and happiness surrounding chocolate,
there is one group
that doesn't get to share in it,
and that is the farmers
who grow cocoa in the first place.
The vast majority have
never even tasted chocolate.
And that is something
that reporters and documentarians
love to try
and remedy on camera,
and perhaps none
as patronizingly as this.
These farmers have been growing
beans for decades.
They're about to get
their first taste of chocolate.
- You have never tried chocolate?
- No.
It's good!
It's good to eat!
That is your cocoa!
To those who thought
that I'm the most annoying version
of a loud man on TV
with a British accent,
looks like you owe me
an apology.
Because that is pretty condescending
right there.
"Attention, former subjects,
we noticed that you've not once
tasted the fruits
of your interminable toil,
so allow me to present you with
a generous gift of a single Kit Kat.
That is your cocoa!"
And the reason most farmers
haven't tried chocolate before
is, they can't afford it.
More than 60% of cocoa comes
from two West African countries:
Ivory Coast and Ghana.
Researchers have found that,
in those places,
between 73 and 90% of cocoa farmers
do not earn a living income,
with 30 to 58% earning below
the World Bank's extreme poverty line.
There's a bit weird about a product
so synonymous for spreading joy,
and giving babies
what's basically a cocaine rush,
abandoning those who grow
its key ingredient to grinding poverty.
Because even if you had a sense
that cocoa production had issues,
the truth is,
from the land its grown on,
to the working conditions
of those who harvest it,
it is worse
than you may realize.
So, given that,
as we prepare for our annual tradition
of stuffing as much of it
in our faces as humanly possible,
let's talk about chocolate.
Let's start with the fact
that cocoa is mostly grown
on very small, family-run plots.
There are about half a million
of them in Ivory Coast,
and another 800,000 in Ghana.
Harvesting cocoa pods is labor
intensive and done entirely by hand.
And what's inside them may not be
what you are picturing in your mind.
Ivans Kanube cracks open the pods
to extract the sweet, slimy bean,
which at this stage
has a flavor like lychee fruit.
Once the cocoa is collected,
it's left to ferment under banana
leaves for about seven days.
That slimy bean soup is cocoa.
Chocolate starts out
as gluey white insect larva
that comes out of a big tree egg,
and it's only after a long process
that that fermenting forest jizz
becomes something more appetizing.
Or in the case of a Mounds bar,
even less appetizing.
From the farm, the cocoa
then passes through a number of hands
on its way
to the chocolate companies,
from the people who collect the beans,
to the warehouses who store them,
each of whom gets paid
for their part in the chain.
But at a certain point, they all feed
into one narrow bottleneck,
as this expert explains in an almost
unnervingly soothing way.
In a way, the story of chocolate
is a little bit like an hourglass,
where you have millions
of smallholders growing cocoa
at the very beginning of the story,
and at the end of the story,
you have millions of consumers
eating chocolate.
But right at the center
of the hourglass
are a handful
of extremely powerful companies.
These companies
are the cocoa traders.
Okay.
That was a very good description
of how the industry works,
from what I can only assume
is a nine-hour YouTube video
entitled "Woman Explains Cocoa
Sector Inequality ASMR
Fall Asleep Now High Quality
Headphones On."
But it is true,
the industry is dominated by just
a handful of cocoa trading companies,
the most powerful of which
are the so-called big three:
Cargill, Barry Callebaut, and OFI,
which together buy and process
about 60% of the world's cocoa.
They then sell to a handful
of major chocolate companies:
Mars, Mondelez, which owns Cadbury,
Ferrero, Nestle, and Hershey,
which together
sell over half the world's chocolate.
When you have so many farmers,
and so few buyers,
the buyers clearly have
a big advantage.
That is why only about 6%
of the value of a chocolate bar
makes its way back to the farmer.
I'm not saying
that those companies
aren't adding real value
to their part of the process.
They are! This Halloween,
try offering a Spiderman a Kit Kat
or a handful of sticky white bean larva
and see which they prefer.
But there are clearly
massive disparities
in who reaps the benefits
of this extremely profitable industry.
And I will say,
there are mechanisms in place
to at least help stabilize
the amount that farmers earn.
Both Ghana and Ivory Coast
set minimum prices
that farmers receive for their cocoa.
The problem is, those prices
are not only difficult to enforce,
but crucially, they're often not enough
to cover the costs of farming.
And so, some farmers, most of whom
are experiencing extreme poverty,
have resorted to trying
to increase their earnings
by growing more cocoa on land
that is protected by the government.
Which is illegal because it can do
significant environmental damage.
Desperate farmers
supplement their crop
by growing cocoa trees
in a protected forest,
where the uncultivated soil
is more fertile,
and stolen land is, in effect,
free of charge.
What's left behind
is known as a skeleton forest.
Let's face it,
it was only a matter of time
before the phrase "skeleton forest"
appeared on this show.
Because if there is a sinister
combination of words out there,
we're gonna stumble over it.
Tumor elections? Ghost abuse?
m*rder pollution? Stay tuned.
All those are coming up.
But it's not just environmental damage,
there is also significant human cost
in cocoa farming,
which has been well-known
for a while.
Around 20 years ago, a series
of news stories and a documentary
found that young children, some of
whom had been enslaved or trafficked,
were working on cocoa farms that
supplied major chocolate companies.
And in the wake
of public horror over this,
companies didn't do themselves
any favors with how they responded.
Listen to the answers
that this Dutch journalist got
when he asked Nestle
about whether children
were involved in making its chocolate.
Children are working in virtually every
agricultural setup around the world.
- Yes.
- Okay?
As a matter of fact, when I was 11 or
I did not get paid for it.
I did it because I thought
it was fun.
That was child labor.
A child working.
- And that's the same.
- It's not the same.
It's evidently.
I didn't need to do that. Okay?
Right. Not to stress the most
obvious point in the universe,
but doing something for fun isn't
the same thing as doing it to survive.
It's the difference
between being in an escape room
and being in a "Saw" movie.
They're both bad first date ideas,
but that is where the similarities end.
I'll give him this:
a lot of child labor
does consist of kids working
on their own families' cocoa farms.
Though even in those cases, they can
be doing so in hazardous conditions.
And also, watch as that Nestle
spokesperson
accidentally walks into
a pretty damaging admission
of exactly why they might have been
having to do that in the first place.
For a poor farmer in Africa,
often the help
that he gets from his children
is vital in order to maintain
the standard of living of the family.
- Because they are…
- Because they are so desperately poor.
They don't get paid enough by Nestle,
or by the companies they work for.
All right, that's it.
Thank you very much.
It is very funny to me that he thought
ending that call when he did
was somehow avoiding
implicating himself.
"The farmers have to make
their children work for them,
because they are so poor, they're
not paid a living wage by Nestle,
the company that I…
Nice try, you're breaking up,
I'm going through a tunnel.
Goodbye! That was a close one.
I think I got away with it."
And, again, it's not just kids
working on their family farms.
Children have been known
to be forced, or trafficked,
to work in cocoa production.
While, because of the nature of this
crime, exact numbers aren't known,
one survey estimated that
in Ivory Coast, over a 4-year period,
were victims of forced labor,
while in Ghana, it was 14,000.
And back in the 2000s,
outrage over this spurred
U.S. lawmakers to take action.
First, they considered
mandating labels for chocolate,
indicating whether or not it was
made with child sl*ve labor.
But the chocolate industry
then lobbied that down
to a voluntary agreement to eliminate
the "worst forms of child labor",
promising to get it done
by July 2005.
That agreement later became known
as the Harkin-Engel Protocol,
after the two lawmakers
who'd pushed for it.
But when the deadline
rolled around,
Senator Harkin
had this unfortunate update.
Though I was disappointed
that the July 1st deadline
was not fully met by the industry,
they have given us a commitment
to achieving a certification system
which can be expanded across the
cocoa-growing areas of West Africa,
and which will cover
of Ivory Coast and Ghana
in three years time.
I am very pleased
with this commitment.
Wait, are you?
I'm genuinely jealous of your
infinite capacity for trusting others.
"I see from the first panel
of today's Peanuts comic
that Lucy is finally going to let
Charlie Brown kick the football.
While I was disappointed
by her actions in the past,
a new day has brought a sense
of integrity within this young girl,
and I'm very excited
to move my gaze down the page
and see this commitment honored in…
she did it again!"
And predictably, the companies
didn't meet that new deadline either.
Once 2008 rolled around,
they kicked it to 2010,
then pushed it again to 2020
while downgrading their goal
to just getting a 70% reduction
in child labor,
rather than eliminating it entirely,
then they missed that deadline, too.
And the companies
almost certainly knew
that they wouldn't be
keeping their promises here.
As the former head of The
International Cocoa Initiative put it
"Was there any chance
of child labor being eradicated
by the original 2005 deadline?
No, never."
And at that point,
why bother setting a date at all?
If your friend agrees
to meet you for dinner at 7:00,
then pushes it to 7:30, then 8:00,
and then finally says "Be there in 20
years not minutes,"
it feels they never had any intention
of getting dinner in the first place.
It is not like the chocolate
companies have done nothing.
They started flashy-looking programs
with "cocoa" in their names
that promised to be vigilant
about monitoring for child labor,
and produced impressive looking ads
featuring happy farmers,
and websites showing how carefully
they monitor their supply chain.
But the reality hasn't remotely
lived up to the rhetoric.
Just last year, some journalists
looked at a map of farms
on Mondelez's Cocoa Life website,
and then sent a camera crew
to Ghana to check some out,
and you'll never guess
what they found.
It didn't take long
to find children working on a farm
matching the coordinates
listed on the Cocoa Life website.
The team filmed two young boys
aged 10 and 11,
harvesting cocoa pods using
long sticks with sharp hooks
and wearing no protective clothing.
It's true, they went to just one
of the farms listed on their site,
a site filled with claims that child
labor is completely unacceptable,
and instantly found child labor.
I don't know what statement Mondelez
can release in the wake of that,
other than maybe, "Honestly, did not
think anyone would actually check."
If you're thinking, "We can't trust
companies to monitor themselves,
that's why there should
be a third party involved."
The thing is,
those have also existed for years,
chocolate companies have long
purchased at least some of their beans
from third-party
organizations like these,
who certify the farmers
who supply them
have met certain child labor
and environmental standards.
You might have seen
one of these logos on a chocolate bar
and felt reassured by it.
But while advocates
say that some of these organizations
have improved
conditions somewhat,
these logos just aren't the guarantee
that you might want them to be.
For a start, while the organizations
pay farmers a small premium
for meeting their standards,
those premiums might not even cover
the cost of complying with the program.
But also, typically,
inspections for the labels
are required of fewer
than one in 10 farms annually.
Watch what happened
when reporters went undercover
as chocolate company executives,
and visited a contractor
who did audits for Utz,
one of those third-party organizations.
Because he explains to them
exactly why he's so confident
that he won't find child labor
on any farm that he visits.
The audit
is announced in advance.
You go and visit producers
who know that you're coming.
When you go to them,
you are not gonna see any children.
That is true auditors
give advance notice of inspections.
Which is clearly ridiculous.
Because that's never
going to be reliable.
If you tell your teenager
"I'm checking your backpack
for cigarettes next Tuesday",
then great news,
you're not gonna find any.
I have to tell you,
Utz has maintained that it holds
auditors to the highest standards.
You have seen those standards
and, I don't know about you,
but they didn't seem that high to me.
As for Mondelez,
who turned out to have child labor
at one of its suppliers in Ghana,
it said that it was
"deeply concerned" by these incidents,
and, okay, that makes
two of us, Mondelez.
It wants you to know that it has a
child labor monitoring system in place
to prevent this kind of thing
from happening.
Which is very reassuring,
until you remember
it only took a documentary crew
one flight to Ghana
to prove that that system
is, at best, deeply inadequate.
All these companies will say that
they are concerned about child labor,
and that they've spent a lot of money
trying to fix it.
By one estimate, as of 2019,
they'd spent more than $150 million
to address this issue.
But that's over 18 years,
and while they were collecting
$103 billion in sales annually.
Meaning that over two decades,
they've spent just 0.1%
of one year's sales.
And come on!
M&M's must've spent more than that
fine-tuning exactly how fuckable
the Green M&M is.
And for all the companies'
claims of concern,
the fact remains: according
to the U.S. Department of Labor,
an estimated
one and a half million children
work in cocoa production
in Ghana and Ivory Coast,
many of whom are engaged
in dangerous tasks.
Or, as a Washington Post
investigation concluded
"the odds are substantial that a
chocolate bar bought in the US
is the product of child labor".
In fact, the persistence of it
in the supply chain is an open secret.
Just watch as some young workers
end up joking about it
when asked by visiting journalists.
There is no child labor here.
We're all between
And the young boy to your left?
- How old are you?
- He's 25. 21.
- He's laughing.
- He can laugh. It's true!
The journalist
wants to know how old you are.
Just tell him you're 21.
Say you're 21.
I'm 21.
We all fondly remember being 21,
small frame, childlike voice,
another guy has to constantly
remind you that you're 21.
Just classic early-20s stuff.
I know they were laughing there,
and that clip was kind of charming.
But the truth is, for others,
the stories are pretty harrowing,
like this young girl
who said that, at this point,
she'd already been farming cocoa
for five years.
I was brought here by my aunt.
I was told I would
be helping with the baby,
but instead I only do farming.
She says she wants to go to school,
but her uncle can't afford to send her.
My uncle says he struggles
to pay for his own children,
so if I join them, he will not
be able to buy the schoolbooks.
We asked if she misses her family.
Yes.
- Do you hear from them?
- No.
Have you ever been back to visit them
since you came here?
No.
That is heartbreaking.
And the truth is,
there are a lot more clips
out there like that one
than there are of kids
joking around about being 21.
You might be wondering,
what can we do differently?
And I will admit,
it's really complicated.
Child labor in these regions
is caused by a myriad of issues,
from poor infrastructure
to limited access to education.
But to a significant extent,
it is caused by poverty.
A poverty that is perpetuated
by these chocolate companies.
And if they really
want to remedy things,
a good first step would
simply be to pay farmers more.
And companies may balk at that,
saying that they don't set the price,
the market does.
But as this advocate points out,
that's a pretty lousy excuse.
Every trader and every
multinational I speak to always say
"But that's the world market price.
We have no influence on that at all."
But you buy a quarter
of the world's cocoa beans.
How can you
not influence the price?
Exactly.
I am no economist,
despite winning back in preschool
"Most Likely to be an Economist
Based on Appearance,"
But if you buy that much
of the global supply in something,
you definitely have some
sway over how much it costs.
There are models
here that companies could look to.
Remember that Dutch journalist making
the guy from Nestle squirm?
As a result of that segment,
he created his own chocolate company,
Tony's Chocolonely.
It works hard
to ensure that its supply chain
is free from child or sl*ve labor,
and ensures that the people who grow
its cocoa aren't in dire poverty.
Here is its former
head of sustainability,
explaining how it sets the price
for the beans that it buys.
We calculate how big the gap is
between the government set price,
and the living income price, and we
pay that gap as an extra premium.
For the spring harvest,
the premium was about $63 higher
than what's set by the government,
meaning Tony's paid almost double
for each bag of beans.
That's great.
And it says something
that Tony's was somehow able
to pay farmers double the going rate,
despite being a mid-size Dutch cocoa
company whose logo, by the way,
looks like a casual dining restaurant
operated by-and-for clowns.
If these guys can do it, there's frankly
no reason why these guys can't as well.
And to be fair,
even Tony's own website admits
the scale of the challenge here,
saying "We have never found
an instance of modern sl*very
in our supply chain.
However, we do not guarantee
our chocolate is 100% sl*ve free.
While we are doing everything
we can to prevent sl*very
and child labor,
we are also realistic."
And I have to say,
I appreciate that,
because there is a difference between
recognizing how much there is to do,
and simply not doing enough.
And I know these are companies,
not charities,
whose job it is to make money
and not save the world.
But that means that they will
only care about this problem
exactly as much
as they are forced to.
If we are serious about getting
child labor out of our chocolate,
we can't keep relying on pinky
promises and the honor system,
we need tough legislation that requires
companies do the right thing.
And it's not like this
is the only industry
where exploitation
in other countries is the norm.
I could just as easily have done
this piece about coffee or palm oil.
And we actually
talked about trafficking
and child labor in the U.S.
farm system this year.
But experts themselves
say of chocolate
"in few industries is the evidence
of objectionable practices so clear,
the industry's pledges
to reform so ambitious,
and the breaching
of those promises so obvious."
We have known for 20 years
what the problems are here,
and we haven't bothered
to fix them.
But if we do, then imagine this:
one day, maybe, just maybe,
we can get back
to a point where chocolate
can once more give us the simple
uncomplicated joy of this.
Exactly. And now, this!
And Now:
Local Law Enforcement Agencies
Go All Out with Their
Halloween Safety PSAs.
Hi, everybody.
This is K-9 Sam for the Prince George's
County Police Department
with some Halloween safety tips.
We're here to go over some safety tips
for the upcoming Halloween.
That's gonna be on October 31st.
We'll celebrate at the recommended
hours of 6:00 to 8:00 PM.
Never…
…enter the home
of someone you do not know.
It's a good idea
go trickor-treating with friends.
Also, be very careful
while you're crossing the streets.
Try to use the crosswalks…
Really, man?
When you're crossing the road,
make sure you're crossing at a sidewalk,
looking both ways
before going across.
If you see something suspicious,
make sure you give us a call!
For parents handing out treats at home,
do not let the kids inside the house.
Here are some tips
parents can be aware of
when taking their kiddos
trick-or-treating.
Let's keep our kids safe.
Let's have a great
and spooktacular Halloween.
That's our show.
We'll see you next week, good night!
10x15 - Child labour in cocoa production
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American late-night talk and news satire television program hosted by comedian John Oliver.
American late-night talk and news satire television program hosted by comedian John Oliver.