Chocolate - The Bitter Truth

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Duration: 1 hour

We spend more on chocolate each year than investors spend on gold - but as Easter approaches, how much do we really know about where it comes from or how it is made?

Panorama reporter Paul Kenyon goes undercover as a cocoa trader in West Africa and discovers children as young as seven working long hours on cocoa farms, helping to make the chocolate we love so much. He buys a tonne of cocoa made with child labour, and sees how easy it is to sell it into the supply chain which leads to our high streets.

He also helps rescue a 12-year-old boy - trafficked across borders - to pick cocoa as a modern-day slave and reunites him with his mother. For the first time, we meet the kids who harvest our cocoa but who have never tasted chocolate.

  • Tracing the bitter truth of chocolate and child labour

    Panorama reporter Paul Kenyon poses as a cocoa dealer to uncover the extent of child labour in the chocolate trade.

    Read more about Panorama's investigation

  • Cocoa slave tastes sweet freedom

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    This Easter, Britons will eat their way through 80 million chocolate eggs but would we have such a sweet tooth if we knew how it was harvested?
    Sixty per cent of cocoa beans found in chocolate on UK shop shelves are sourced in Ghana and Ivory Coast.
    Fatao is a 12-year-old boy from Burkina Faso who Panorama discovers working on a cocoa farm in Ghana.
    He is just one of thousands of trafficked children helping to feed the world's appetite for chocolate.

  • Chocolate industry comments to Panorama

    Companies and organisations comments to Panorama - Chocolate: The Bitter Truth

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  • Your comments

    Read a selection of your comments on the programme

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Credits

Reporter
Paul Kenyon
Director
Howard Bradburn
Producer
Howard Bradburn

Broadcasts

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