MrBeast reveals Big Chocolate using 1.5M+ kids in illegal child labor on cacao farms đ«
âThereâs 1.5 to 1.8 million kids working in illegal child labor on cacao farms in West Africa, where majority of the worldâs cacao comes from. I had no idea how bad it was until I started a chocolate company. Itâs been normalized for decades in the chocolate industry. Big Chocolate pays farmers so little that they just canât afford to not use children.â
âWhen I asked distributors if I could pay a premium and not have little kids work on my farms, it literally didnât exist. No one really seemed to even think it needed to exist.â
âSo we went to five villages that the average child labor there was like 45%. Seven months later we were able to get a 90% reduction and get it to where there are only around 50 still in child labor with our first check-in.â
âThere literally wasnât a school because kids just worked on the farm. So we built a school so they could go to school. The goal isnât just to get the kids out of child labor. Itâs also to get them an education so theyâre not only working on a cacao farm and doomed to work on it their whole life, because they donât know anything else.â