Maurice Hinchey: “I hope that the Members will take this amendment seriously, because it is in fact a very serious matter. It is, in some…”

“I hope that the Members will take this amendment seriously, because it is in fact a very serious matter. It is, in some measure, a result of this global trading pattern that we have engaged in without really examining closely and understanding fully the consequences of this system. A recent report by our own State Department estimated that there are currently some 15,000 children working on cocoa and similar plantations in the Ivory Coast alone. That is the source of about 43 percent of the cocoa that is imported into this country. I think that if people in this country knew that they were buying products that were the result of slave labor, particularly the labor of children as young as 8 or 9 years old, they would not buy it. And I think that this amendment which proposes a simple labeling mechanism to indicate where this cocoa is coming from and the slave conditions under which it is being farmed and harvested is a good amendment and it ought to be adopted.”