According to a CBS News investigation, the candy maker Mars, Inc. continues to use cocoa that has been picked in Africa by child laborers, casting doubt on the firm’s professed dedication to keeping children in school.

The media outlet spoke with whistleblowers who claimed that supervisors of cocoa fields in Ghana are under pressure to “cook” lists of children who are ostensibly in school rather than working in the fields. They also claimed that no one verifies the accuracy of the lists, and that they saw children as young as five working at each of the farms (one of them almost cutting off his fingers with a machete while opening cocoa pods).

Mars, the company behind well-known candies like Snickers and M&Ms, has ambitions to eliminate child labor from its supply chain by 2025. According to CBS, the chocolate manufacturer has highlighted lists of thousands of kids it has saved from cocoa fields and returned to school. However, the investigation conducted by the site revealed that a few of these children are still employed in the fields.

The Virginia-based chocolate manufacturer’s cocoa field supervisor, who had previously contributed to the lists’ creation, revealed to CBS in an anonymous manner that “nearly all of the data” used to compile the lists “is cooked… or is not accurate.”

Following 16 years of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a similar action against Nestle and Cargill in 2021, which is when the current lawsuit is based. The firms have been under constant pressure from activists to fulfill their commitments to end child labor in their supply networks.

In the recently filed lawsuit, the companies are accused of unjust enrichment, theft, consumer fraud, and negligent supervision. “Cargill is aware of the pervasiveness of child labor in its cocoa supply chain yet employs lofty but false stories of remediation and successful sustainability as a deplorable marketing tactic,” the lawsuit states.

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