Siaka and Brahima went to the bus station in Mali two years ago looking for work.
They planned on traveling to the Ivory Coast where a man had promised them they would
work as construction workers and be paid $170 a year.
Siaka was 14 years old,,,Brahima was 12 years old.
When the boys arrived in Ivory Coast, they were met be a farmer named Dote.  It was then
that the boys discovered that Dote had bought the boys for $28 each.
There are many thousands of slaves in Ivory Coast.

Cocoa beans come from pods on the cacao tree.  To get the 400 or so beans it takes to make a pound of chocolate, the boys cut 10 pods from the trees, slice them open, scoop out the beans, spread them in baskets or on mats and cover them to ferment.  Then they uncover the beans, place them in the sun to dry, bag them and load them onto trucks to begin the journey to the chocolate manufacturers of America or Europe.

Not all the farms use slaves.  Working field hands are paid about $150 a year on the cocoa farms.  Problem is the price of cocoa has dropped from 67 cents a pound in 1996 to 51 cents a pound in 2000.  So farmers say that they are forced to use the very cheapest labor they can find .....slaves.  Unlike the paid workers, the slaves are fed the barest of foods and if necessary  are beaten and chained.

Cocoa processed by workers and cocoa processed by slaves get all jumbled together in warehouse, ships, trucks and rail cars.  So when to big American and European food companies issue press releases claiming that they make every effort to not purchase cocoa processed by slave labor .... well that is just crap.

So yes, the M&Ms and the Milky Ways and the Reeses, ect all contain slave labor as a source of their chocolate.  The Labor Department of the United States is currently spending $4.3 million on programs to reduce/eliminate child slave labor in West Africa.

Wow, well maybe if we just boycott chocolate?

Nope.  Coffee and Cotton are also processed by slaves.

World-wide, there are millions of children like Siaka and Brahima who are forced  into
factory and farm slavery.  Most girls are forced into house labor and prostitution.