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Americans spend nearly $7 billion on Halloween. Mostly on candy, and mostly on chocolate.
美國人大約花費70億美元在萬圣節上。大部分在糖果并且其中的更大部分是在巧克力上。
But even milk chocolate has a dark side. Most chocolate today comes from West Africa, where small landholders grow more than 3 million metric tons of the fruit of the cacao tree. To turn that fruit into chocolate requires labor—and much of that labor is performed by children.
但是其實就算是雪白的牛奶巧克力中，也有它黑暗的一面。現今，大多數的巧克力是來自西非，在那片狹小的土地上孕育了超過300萬公噸的可可樹果實。要把果實轉變為巧克力，這就需要用到勞工——而絕大部分的勞工正是兒童。
More than 100,000 children in Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana help produce more than half of the world's cocoa, according to the U.S. State Department. Worse, at least 10,000 of these kids are likely enslaved.
由美國國務院統計得出，超過100000個在科特迪瓦和加納的兒童幫助生產超過世界一半需求的可可。更糟的是，至少有10000的兒童是被奴役的。
The cocoa industry, including giants such as Hershey's or Cadbury, pledged in 2001 to end suchchild labor in the cacao groves. But the deadline for voluntary compliance has been continually pushed back and the current goal is to ensure that some 50 percent of farms are child-labor free. Fair Trade certified chocolate can help, as well as ensure that African farmers profit from the cocoa trade. Otherwise, handing kids treats derived from African children's slave labor is a nasty trick. Nobody wants to be a slave for Halloween.
包括好時和吉百利在內的可可行業巨頭，承諾在2001停止諸如此類的可可園中的童工行為。但是到最后期限結束之時，此項承諾最終被不斷推遲，而最近的目標是確保能有一半的農場實現無童工行為。就如同確保非洲農民可以從可可貿易中獲利一樣，公平貿易認證的巧克力也可以同樣起到幫助作用。否則，這將會致使兒童們對非洲兒童的奴役行為是為一種骯臟的游戲。沒有人想在萬圣節成為奴隸。
——David Biello
