The Jordan Harbinger Show - 754: Miki Mistrati | The Dark Side of the Chocolate Industry

Episode Date: November 22, 2022

Miki Mistrati (@MrMistrati) is the award-winning director of three international documentaries exposing brutal trafficking and illegal child labor in the multi-billion dollar chocolate industry: The Chocolate War, The Shady Chocolate Business, and The Dark Side of Chocolate. What We Discuss with Miki Mistrati: How human trafficking, child slavery, and inhumane treatment likely contribute to the production of your favorite chocolate products. Why, nearly two decades after pledging to eradicate child labor, major chocolate companies still cannot identify the farms where all their cocoa comes from, let alone if child labor was used in producing it. How the biggest chocolate companies wield their billions of dollars in profits to keep legislation that would hold them accountable at bay. What we, as consumers, can do to effectively censure these companies and help the people they exploit. How to ensure the chocolate we enjoy is ethically and sustainably sourced. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/754 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Miss the show we did with Vince Beiser — author of The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization? Make sure to check out episode 97: Vince Beiser | Why Sand Is More Important Than You Think It Is! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. Mandelaus owns Cadbury, which is a former British brand, a chocolate brand. Mandelaus is American based in Chicago. It's a huge chocolate manufacturer. And you know what? I went to the cocoa live plantations, the so-called sustainable-sourced cocoa plantations. It was full of Ghanaian children working. Welcome to the show.

I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills are the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with scientists and entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional four-star general journalist-turned poker champion, former cult member, undercover agent or tech mogul, and each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better thinker. If you are new to the show, welcome. If you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about it, I really love it when you do that.

Our episode's starter packs are a great place to begin. These are collections of our favorite episodes organized by topic. They'll help new listeners get a taste of everything that we do here on this show. Topics like persuasion and influence, disinformation and cyber warfare, China, North Korea, crime and cults, and more. just visit jordan harbinger.com slash start, or you can search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, now I've wanted to do an episode about chocolate for a long time now, not just because I enjoy eating chocolate, but because I know that any sort of commodity that

us folks here living in the West love and have loved for hundreds of years probably is just built on the backs of some really gross stuff. And I was not wrong. I knew something wasn't right when I heard rumors of crazy low wages and brutal conditions on chocolate plantations. I looked into coffee as well, should do a show on that. And I'd seen some stuff here and there on YouTube and the web, but no deep dives. I decided to reach out to somebody who's been investigating this. And so here we are with my friend Mickey Mistratti. He's an investigative journalist and documentarian and a consistent pain in the ass for chocolate companies

worldwide because he's exposing not only inhumane working conditions, but human trafficking and even child slavery and other gross stuff happening, also that we can hammer down a bunch of truffles on Halloween or Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever. This is a really insightful episode. It's going to ruin chocolate for you, but we end with a few rays of sunshine. There are ways to get chocolate that does not involve this. I'll go into that, and I just really think you're going to enjoy this peak inside the dark world of chocolate.

Sorry, couldn't resist. By the way, I was inspired by this episode to donate the money from the advertising from this episode, along with some other cash, to build a school in Ghana. for kids, not only kids that have been trafficked, but for a lot of kids that possibly have been trafficked into farm chocolate, and just other kids in Ghana who can't go to school. So don't skip the ads in this one, support our sponsors where you can, and your money will go to a good cause, and you can rest easy knowing that. Here we go with Mickey Mistratti. There are approximately 3 million tons of chocolate consumed per year, which is, you know, objectively a lot of chocolate. I was going to say a ton, but I kind of,

it doesn't really do it justice. What is 3 million tons, does it? What most people don't know is that a lot of the cocoa needed for the chocolate is farmed by children working in slave-like conditions, which is disgusting when you think about it and even more disgusting when you see it on camera like you've managed to capture. So first of all, thank you for coming on the show here. Thank you for inviting me. How did you get wind of this issue to begin with? You know, were you just like a chocolate fan and then you went, holy crap, it's being made by slaves? How did this come to you? No, no, actually, I was just a consumer. I was at my local supermarket to pick up to buy a chocolate bar. That's more than 15 years ago.

And there were seven chocolate bars. And one was with a fair trade mark. And I was just like, okay, one is fair trade. What about the six others? Are they unfair trade? Yeah. That was actually my question to myself. So that was the very beginning of it.

And then I went back and started to look up if there were any stories to research. And I didn't find much. But there were a few pieces. One was in an American magazine called Fortune, where there were a report about child slavery and trafficking of kids. And I decided to reach out to the photographer from that piece. And I asked him, is this really a big issue out there? He said, yeah, yeah, you can go with me.

And I invited him to Copenhagen. He slept on my sofa for a couple of days. And then we traveled to Ivory Coast. And honestly, it was just outside the door. It was huge. I was so shocked about how many kids were working in the Coco fields. Most Coco comes from Ivory Coast, right? There's one, is it one big Swiss supplier?

The name sounds like Barry Gallabo, but I'm getting it wrong. Most of the cocoa comes from Kodewa, Ivory Coast. That's 40% and 25% from Ghana. our neighboring countries. So that's the cocoa built. And most of the cocoa is bought by Barry Calibor or Olam. They are like Ann Cargill, American Cargill, and they buy like almost all the cocoa. And then they are selling it to all the chocolate makers around the world.

Okay, so chocolate makers being like Faroe Rochay, Nestle, the brands that we see in the store. Mars. Mars. Yeah, Mars. Yes. What made you want to go undercover in, was it Mali in Africa to investigate child trafficking? Because I'm trying to write about something, expose something to a podcast about something that I get. But you were just like, no, I want to go and see this with my own eyes.

That had to be kind of a trip, no pun intended. I didn't think too much about it then. That's the key, right? Yeah, because if you think too much, you probably don't do stupid things. Yeah. And go undercover in Mali with lots of jihadists. lots of trouble. It's a very, very poor country.

But I decided to grow undercover because, you know, sneaking around like a white guy in remote areas in Mali is not like too easy. Yeah. And with an open camera. So, but on the other hand, it was just a daily thing that kids from Mali were transported from Mali into Ivory Coast and then into the, cocoa plantations. So, you know, I was just sitting at a bus stop in the southern part of the country.

And some local helpers told me, hey, you just wait for the next bus. And you will see that kids, you know, six, eight, ten years old are getting picked up by traffickers. And they literally just did that in front of my face. And I remember this. It was so, like, heartbreaking. because, you know, you're out on a mission. You want to have your documentation of the problems.

On the other hand, I just wanted to stop it in a way, you know, to just go run to the local police and say, hey, guys, there is illegal activities, but it's not an option when you're out working undercover in countries like Mali. Of course, I mean, if there are kids, first of all, six, eight and ten, up to age, I think 14 was one of the kids in the documentary or 15 years old, something like that. I have a three-year-old kid,

and I had to build a Lego set with him last night. You know, it's tough for him to do that. I can't really imagine what a six-year-old could do on a plantation. And also, I assume you're not really getting your money's worth out of a six-year-old kid, so they work there for years, I would imagine, until you do. It's so unbelievably cruel to think of a six-year-old kid who should be watching cartoons and eating cereal in his pajamas, is getting up early after sleeping outside in a hut that's locked and cutting cocoa pods open

for, I don't know, eight to 12 hours a day in the sun, and being smuggled in there away from his mom and dad, away from his brothers and sisters, from Molly, Niger, Burkina Faso. It's really heartbreaking. And that's understating this, of course. But yeah, you can't report it to the cops because they already know. They know. Of course they know. Yeah, it's so easy information to get.

And that was what I was also been shocking for me. that let's just say it was hiding the problems. No, it's easy. And the companies, the executives, they know, Cargill has been present in Cote d'I for more than 40 years. They have like a thousand of employees in Cote d'Ira, in the Ivory Coast. It takes you a couple of hours driving into the Cocoa belt

in your four-wheel driver, and then you will walk into random. They even know where the cocoa comes from. from the specific areas and plantations because they have to know the producers of the cocoa. So it's so easy, it's just under your nose. So claiming at that time when I did my first film, they said, oh, my goodness, we didn't know there was a problem.

Well, today they are more like, well, we know there is a problem and we are doing our best to stop this, which is bullocks, in my opinions. Because if you wanted to stop this, It would be so easy. Look at them right now. People can't pay their bills for energy in Europe. It's a big disaster at the moment.

And you know what? Governments around Europe, they are now forcing people to say, hey, we need to be in houses. We need to pull down the heat because we are lacking electricity and energy. And guess what? They have a solution to it. It's all about being able to make decision to make changes. They can make the changes.

And that's what's really, sorry for my friends, pisses me off. That we are talking about America's biggest company, family-owned consumer company, supermarket, Cargill. They could change this and they would be front runners if they did that. But unfortunately, they don't. really care? I have to say, this is, of course, my opinion. They don't care because if they did care, they would make the changes. They can do it hand in hand with Mars, with Nestle, with all the big companies. That would be so easy to do. It really is horrifying. And I think what you're doing is important because I'm sure their logic goes a little something like this. We can't stop child

slavery. That means we would have to pay workers more. And if we pay workers more or we pay even the child laborers actual money to deal with this problem where we enforce this, it's going to raise the price of chocolate. If Cargo raises the price of chocolate, then Mars or Nestle, and they don't do that, we're going to lose to our competitors. So what you're doing is surfacing this such that the publicity is so bad for everyone involved that they all have to do it at the same time, which means at the end, consumer pays five cents or four cents more for a bar of chocolate, and no kids are trafficked from poor countries to other countries to work in fields all day as slaves. And it's, I mean, that's a definition of fair trade, really, in many ways.

It is. The thing is, when you look at the production of a chocolate bar, only six to seven percent of the money goes to the farmers. Let's just put it this way. There is space to make it a better deal for the farmers. Why is it the one who does all the hard work will get, the lowest pay. Of course I know because they don't have a union, they don't have power. Yeah. The power to make this. And unfortunately, too many hands have to get money before it goes to the consumers. But as you said, the consumers could also do something to change things by, for instance, not buying that kind of chocolate. Yeah. The other thing is, and I know that there's people who go, yeah, well, it's market power, economic, nobody needs chocolate. It's a

luxury product, right? I'm not, I can't not get to work because my car doesn't have chocolate in it. I'm not going to freeze over the cold winter because I don't have chocolate, right? It's a luxury good, so you can't really apply the same sort of rationalizations and justifications as you would to natural gas, gasoline. And we've done, like you mentioned, we figured out how to deal with the fact that we don't have the petroleum issue. And yet we're willing to go, ah, kids, farming, cocoa pods, look,

we got bigger fish to fry. And that's, that's the sad truth about this. And it really is like an epidemic of vanishing children. You spotlight this

single village that you walked into, and I think this was, there was something like 500 inhabitants in this village. It's very small. 430.

Yeah, not even 500. And it's missing 130 plus children. So over 20% of the population of this village is missing, or a quarter of the population is missing.

And they don't know where the kids are. They were saying the traffickers come to these village markets and they lure the kids away without even telling the parents, which as a parent of a small kid, I cannot even imagine the trauma, the nightmare that this induces. You take the kids to the market to go get some freaking tomatoes and they just never come home and then maybe they escape five years later after being enslaved. I mean, it's just a horrific situation. It is. And what I really don't understand is why we, in such a rich world we are living in, 2022 now, and this is still a problem. Modern slavery with kids. That's really what pisses me off, that we are talking about our future, our children. You know, one thing is that you have modern slavery with adults around the world, but with children, how dare we? How dare we? through not acting right their way to stop this, right?

And why is it that big countries like US and all the countries in the EU and Europe does not stop this immediately? Because we don't care. We don't care. That's the only conclusion I can reach to is we don't care. Why is it that we don't care about children? They don't have a voice. They don't have any power.

They don't have anything. And they are going to be the future of children. this world. I find that horrible. It's horrible. Terrible. I completely agree. I was horrified to find out how many kids were working on these cocoa plantations. It's something, and there are different estimates out there. You'll look at one that says 1.5 million in Ivory Coast in Ghana, mostly. And other organizations will say 30,000. But even if you take that ridiculously low estimate, that is a ton of child slaves, no matter how you look at it. The population of the city I grew up in was like 40,000. The idea that three-fourths of that could have been enslaved children, that's hard to swallow.

I think you wrote this in one of the pieces, or this was written about you. The world's chocolate companies depend on cocoa produced with the aid of more than one million West African child laborers, according to a new report sponsored by the Labor Department. That's right. Nearly 1.6 million children were engaged in child labor in cocoa production, according to the survey, and most of those were involved in tasks considered hazardous, such as wielding machetes, carrying heavy loads, or working with pesticides. Because of changes in methodology, the number of child laborers in the new survey, blah, blah,

the reason the numbers don't match, basically. This isn't about you, sorry, it was an article written that also had your mention of you in it and your work in it. So it's just crazy numbers. And the U.S. Department of Labor in 2015 said it's probably more like two million children. And these are not organizations known for hyperbolic misinformation, right? It's a Department of Labor. They're just crunching the numbers here.

Exactly. And that's what I don't understand. Even the companies right now are agreeing to that kind of numbers. It's not like something they disagree in. We know there is a problem. And that's why I said from I started my first research back in 2008 and up to now, now they admit, well, we have a problem. And now they're just saying, now it's 2025.

Everything would be, you know, good again. Everything would be sustainable, produced, and there would be no kids out there. That's a new, fat, big life. First of all, why is it that they have to have more time? They've been working on this officially from 2001, where they said we will get rid of all child labor in the so-called Harkin Engel prodigal made by two representatives, one of from the House and one of the Senate. And nothing has happened since, you know, they've just pushed and pushed the date of when this will not be a problem anymore. And I have no faith in that any politician really can make any changes because they have had so many.

options to get rid of this problem. And I'm genuinely, I'm asking myself, why isn't a company like Cargill or Mars saying, well, we could do a PR stunt, well, a PR marketing out of this. Now we want to be the first mover. We're living in a world right now where the planet is under pressure. The climate changes is doing a good job of trying to get rid of all of us. We have lots of problems with animal welfare and stuff. I'm just thinking, why is it that some of them in the boardroom saying, you know, guys, I think I have a brilliant idea. Let's just invite this guy, Mickey, from Denmark, and ask him,

can we do this together with you and a few others, and tell us how we can do it and we will pay what it costs. They would be a big business for them and I do not understand why they don't do that because right now it's the time for big changes and the consumers will follow this suggestion. I'm 100%.

But I know what is the problem. You mentioned it in the beginning. The problem is that no one dare to take the lead alone. Right. They have to agree in a big group of all the big companies that this is what we do. Instead of being fund runners and make the changes this world so in need of, I generally don't understand. I mean, Europe tends to lead the way on this. We do that kind of thing with laws and regulation.

I'm not a huge fan of over-regulating things, but this is one of those areas where laws and regulation come in and make everybody change at the same time. And that's the only way we rip off this Band-Aid. Going back to something you'd said earlier with Harkin Engel, so people know what that is with the Senator and the House of Representatives, they were trying back in, was it 2001 or so, trying to get just a label on chocolate that said, this bar may be made with child labor. It was something along those lines,

or this bar was not made with child labor, and they had to audit the thing. So they set the deadline. Of course, industry fought that, like crazy. They missed the 2005 deadline. They missed the 2010 deadline. Then the industry said, well, let's just revise our goal and make it less ambitious. Let's just get a 70% reduction in child labor instead of eliminating it.

And then we'll do that by 2020. And then that goal, too, surprise, surprise, didn't get met. And there's also still no plan to label chocolate that's made with slave labor. So basically they delayed, delayed, delayed, didn't do anything, then reduced the goal, then didn't even accomplish that. And now they're just basically ignoring it. Yeah. And I think since they started this, they had a joint agreement of having a kind of program which covers all the companies. But right now, they have taken all the programs back. So Nestle has their own, Mondales, has, for instance, Cocoa Live. So they have their own, like, programs to try to fight against child labor. But nothing really works. I was in Ghana that was in January this year.

That's Mundelis. Mundelis owns Cadbury, which is a former British brand, a chocolate brand. Mundelis is American based in Chicago. It's a huge chocolate manufacturer. And you know what? I went to the Cocoa Live plantations, the so-called sustainable plantations. sourced cocoa plantations. It was full of Ghanaian children working, even forced one. We met a young. She was 12 and she was so afraid. She was against her will at that plantation, but she didn't

dare to say anything to the plantation owner. Of course. She's a 12 year old girl who's alone. Why would she say anything? Her wish was to go to school. Yeah, that's another important note. these kids are not in school. It's not like they go to school and they work an hour in the cocoa plantation. They sleep outside in these huts in the fields. Then in the morning, somebody who's essentially their jailer will unlock the door and let them out for, I don't know, six, eight hours of work, whatever the work day is. From six morning to six in the afternoon, yeah. Yeah, in the African sun during the harvest season, it's horrible. I mean, there's no getting around it. There's just no getting around it. Backing up a little bit or jumping around a little bit,

I should say, this has to be dangerous work investigating this. Surely you, are at risk exposing something like this. I don't just mean a risk of lawsuits for defamation or whatever. I'm sure that's a risk too. But tell me about Julian Rakifa. I mean, this guy just vanished. Just a few years before I went the first time, Guy Andre Kiefer, we say, Canadian journalist. He was investigating in Ivory Coast. And he just disappeared. And they never find his body or anything. He's still missing today. So I knew that when I was sticking into it. And of course, it is dangerous to dig into such a big business

because, you know, no one really likes you to try to get to the bottom of this problem because we are talking about so many billions of US dollars was changing hands. So, of course, I was aware of that. But if I did think too much, I wouldn't go. Yeah. And I know my children have said a couple of times, isn't it the time where you let someone else to do your work? And I do understand.

And of course, it is something I am thinking about. Your kids are grown. Yes, they are. But, you know, and they still love you. They still love me. Yeah. Apparently, yeah. No, I think it's a thing where you really need to not.

think too much. You need to look at the mission, what you're trying to achieve and stick to that no matter what. I've been in a kind of, well, a hold-up in Mali with some local militias. Oh, wow. I was afraid because my local fixer,

he looked at me and said, just pay them the money. And I could see in his eyes that this was serious business. And we were in the middle of the night, in the bush. which was stupid, but we couldn't manage to go from one village to another village in time. So I just had to take everything I had of cash.

And I gave it. And fortunately, they said, okay, hey, go. But they were pointing like AK 47 into the cars. And they didn't look like friendly. Let me put it that way. And the thing is, you never know in those situations if it's going to get. get really ugly bad yeah yeah it could you know potentially they could have shot us no one would have

know where we were or anything so yeah that's one thing and then I've been been arrested in in Ivory Coast with my American photographer he passed away a couple of years ago unfortunately but he managed to get us out through the American embassy in Abidjan after a year is Is Abidjan the capital of Ivory Coast? Well, it's not the capital. It's the financial capital, if you like. Ah, so it's not the Washington, D.C. It's the New York.

Okay, gotcha. It is, yes. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Mickey Mistradi. We'll be right back. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators every single week,

it is because of my network, and I am teaching you how to build your network for free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. This course is all about improving your relationship building skills and inspiring other people to want to develop a personal and professional relationship with you. And the course does all of that in a super easy, non-cringe, down-to-earth way, no awkward techniques or cheesy strategies, just practical exercises that'll make you a better networker, a better connector, and most importantly,

a better thinker. Just six minutes a day, that's all it takes. You can find the course at jordanharbinger.com slash course. And by the way, many of the guests on our show already subscribe and contribute to the course. So come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, back to Mickey Mistrotti. So yeah, it has to be in the back of your mind when you're out in the middle of nowhere, toting around a freaking video camera, a bunch of batteries, audio gear, you're exposing what amounts to international corporate sponsored organized crime that goes to the absolute highest levels of government. You're doing it on camera. If they catch you out there, you are totally screwed. You could easily vanish without a trace. Nobody would ever find you,

let alone even start looking for you. Where would they even begin to do that? And as you'd mentioned, these trafficking areas, many are controlled by militias. So I assume for those listening, that means no government control, no police presence, there's no one to go and tell. If they wanted to find what's left to you, they couldn't even necessarily get into this area easily to do it because it's controlled by rebels. Yes.

And just adding up that information is just where you think, is this really worth it? doing it, but I really and genuinely think it's worth doing it. And I'm not planning to stop anyway before the end of child slavery. So that's my plan. But of course, I am cautious about not flacking when I'm traveling. Flacking? What does that mean? You know, raising a flag saying.

Oh, flagging. Yeah, I'm coming now. The good thing is, president goes and come in those countries. So it's a little bit easier when there has been an election and a new president is elected because then kind of out of control who is the enemy of the state, if you know what I mean. Yeah. So are the militias in on the trafficking or is it just that since these areas are outside government control, nobody can do anything to solve the problems that are already there?

When there is money, there is malicious. That's what I thought. So up in the northern part of Ivory Coast, there are corporations. between local militias and, yeah, the plantation owners. But look at it this way, you could say it's organized crime. It is, but it's in small circle because at the end of the day, I have a kind of an understanding of why plantation owners, we're talking about family-owned small farms who can't afford any labor

because what they get for the cocoa beans are so low that they can't afford. to hire anyone. So that's the reason why they have to buy, for instance, a child to help them out, despite they're not paying for the kids. They pay the trafficker for the kids. They don't pay the kids labor. They give them money to a trafficker who sits around smoking and kidnapping kids or whatever. Yeah.

At the end of the day, it's all about poverty. If you look at it in your own country, the United States of America, you have lots of crime too. but at the end of the day, at that level, it goes down to poverty. Yeah. Because really poor people, you know, want to survive in a way. I'm not talking about high-end criminals who are like organizing everything from a big manson up in the hills or whatever. No, I'm talking about like on the ground people who do crime. I'm not accepting crime at any point, but I do understand sometimes that very poor people

are part of a crime system only because they want to survive. You know, the traffickers, they are poor people, they're just locals who, by incident, did find a way to get a little bit of money. And so they tricked the kids from Mali into Ivory Coast. So it's a kind of a system which is based on needs, but at the end of the day, it comes down to we as consumers doesn't pay enough for the chocolate. And you could also say the big to blame is the companies because the profit they get from this is so gigantic. You know, it's stock market unless it's Cargill, which is family owned, but rest of the companies are on the stock

market and they are in it for one thing, profit, which is all right. But profit comes first to anything. And that's where I question a bit, why is it that it's necessary to have such a big profit and what you get out of it is child slavery. And as I said so many times, I repeat saying this, I don't understand that. It's terrible. I want to back up a little bit. Can you briefly describe the cocoa plantation to chocolate that we're eating process? You know, it starts off on a farm, Okay. Then what happens? What happens on the farm? Where does it go? Most of the cocoa farms are small family owned, a family with maybe two, three, four kids, and it's between four and six acres. Acres, yeah. Acres, yeah. It's tiny. So what they do,

they have the cocoa trees, is in kind of the jungle together with a few other trees like rubber trees. and the cocoa beans, it takes quite long time before it gets to a pot. It's a part where the beans are inside. Right, the pods, yeah. Yeah. And the pots is like the size of a football, basically, American football. American football. Oh, wow, that's pretty big, actually.

Yeah. Yeah. And it contains around 26 to 30 beans. So they need to harvest the beans. and then they have to crack the beans, open it and take out the beans for drying. And they're using machetes to cut down the pots and to break the parts to get the beans out.

They need to use a machete. And we're talking about kids doing that. Yeah. And they are taking out the beans. And then the beans are dried in the sun for a couple of days. And then a middleman comes to the farms and ask to buy the beans. And he collects like beans from maybe 500 plantations in the same area.

And then he goes to companies like Cargill or Bericalibo or Ulam and sell the beans to them. And then they have all the beans. And then they are selling it either to directly to companies like Nestle or Mars or they are selling it on the stock market as commodity. Commodity, yeah. That's basically how it works. But of course, there is lots of hands to feed in this chain. It's not a complicated supply chain.

It's quite easy to understand. But, you know, every time you do business, some people always find a way to take a little bit, you know, a little piece of the business, and that's what's happening. One euro for the farmer for a kilo of cocoa becomes 40 chocolate bars, which are, of course, worth well over one euro, probably a euro each. I don't even know, right? So, they're really turning quite a bit of profit. Yes, there's a lot of middlemen, of course, but there's a lot of margin here as well. Oh, yes. For what looks like backbreaking work.

You mentioned getting the pods, cracking them open, getting the beans out, drying them in the sun. And these farmers make, what I think I've read some researches is, up to a thousand euros a year to feed a wife and three kids, a whole family. So it's just wild how poor they must be. And this is in Ghana. In Ivory Coast, they actually make 30% less because apparently Ghana has a minimum national price on Coco that they enforce. They have the same in Ivory Coast now. But this minimum price is, again, it's bullocks. Because remember, it's the state, the government makes that minimum price. But if that price is so low that it does make sense, you can have like minimum wage in the U.S. You know, it's so low, so it doesn't really make sense.

So despite that, there is a minimum price, it doesn't work for the farmers. That makes sense, right? The minimum price may not even get to the farmer. It's the person who sells the beans, maybe the guy who's the middleman or the intermediary is getting that price. They're not necessarily saying, hey, I'm making more now, so I'm going to kick it back down to you guys. They're just saying, how do you like my new car or whatever?

Yeah. Of course, cocoa exporters deny all the rumors of trafficking. Do you think that they are ignorant of this, or are they lying, are they just keeping their eyes closed? It seems like you got to know. It's not hidden. I am 100% that they know it exists now. It's not a hidden information anymore. I have done so many films now, and I can see how it's developed the last 15 years from being something they were like, well, we didn't know there was problem to.

Now, they are like taking the responsibility for it, or they tend to tell the public that they take this very serious. But when they go to court, because I've been to the court and watching Nestle and Cargill's lawyers arguing in court in the US, saying that, oh, this is just, we are just a candy company. we do not know what happens in the plantation. This is not our role. So when they are talking to me as a consumer,

they tell me that we are aware, we will do a really good job for you. We will make sure that this will end. And when they jump into the courtroom, they are saying, oh, sorry, but this is not our responsibility. So I hope the judges somehow hear what happens in the public. Yeah, of course. There's tons of footage of 10-year-old kids working on the farms,

not going to school. They can't even speak the local language, which means they're not from that country, of course, they're trafficked in. You got people on film quoting prices saying, how much is a child? 230 euros, it includes delivery. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't get any more clear than that. There's really no speculating when somebody's offering to sell you a kid at a certain price. It means they've done it before and they have the infrastructure to do it. And most children, of course, never get paid. How do we know the kids aren't getting paid? Because they tell me. Yeah. You know, I'm asking the children, you know, how much they get for the work, then they say nothing.

They just get food. And can you blame the farmer? Because he can't afford. That's the craziness about the system. And that's why I'm saying, I'm not trying to protect the farmers, but I do understand the problem from the farmer's point of view. And this is the bigger problem about all this is the system we have in place. It doesn't work.

We had a system where the one who is hard, you know, the hardworking part of it, they get paid nothing. And the other end of the chain, they make a fortune I would have it. Yeah, Nestle alone is like a hundred plus billion dollar a year company. The same with Mandalayas and Kaguli. It's ridiculous. Did people ever escape? Yes. I met a few kids in Mali who escaped.

The thing is, when they are like 10, 12, 14, they are, you know, so afraid. The last one I did see he was so afraid. That was in Ivory Coast. His name was Abu 14 years old. And he had been in the plantation for two years, he told me. And he did when the camera was not filming him. Because we had to, you know, when you are filming in that environment, you need to be cautious because the farmers, they know that we are doing something which is not good.

So we have to be quite like discreet. Discrete, yes. But I asked this guy 14 years old and he did like this. And he asked me if I had any money because he was starving. He signaled to his mouth. For people listening and not watching, he pointed to his mouth like, feed me basically. Yes. Wow.

I gave him some local bank notes because it was so, you know, That's again one of the situations where I was like, oh my goodness, we can't leave this boy. It's the middle of nowhere. Under normal circumstances, you would go to the police and say, hey, there is a crime ongoing. Please, could you go out there? But first of all, I'm undercover. Yeah. I'm illegal in the country.

Two, would the local police do anything? Yeah, they would arrest you and kick your ass, I'm sure. I mean, come on. So it's a kind of a catch-22, but that doesn't really change my mindset on this because it's so heartbreaking when you see like kids suffering. This is the worst thing for me seeing kids suffering like that. He was starving and we're talking about 14 degrees centuries. That's how hot it is. And they are working like hardworking with the machete.

So it's like 100 degrees outside. Is that what 40? is. I think it's something like 100. Yeah, that's around 100, I guess, yes. And imagine also, I've seen like kids working with the pesticides. Sure. And we are talking about poison, and they do not have any mask or protection. They are just spraying the trees, and they do that at least four to six times a year. No one knows at the moment what the longer effect of using pesticides. I did take a lot of photos of the pesticides just to get and analyze up what it was. And we are talking about serious business. You wouldn't even be able to sell it in Europe,

for instance, because that's illegal, and that's what they are spraying the trees with. And they're just spraying without any protection. And how do you think their life would be if they managed to flee from the plantation, which normally would be around when they are like 16, 18, when they get that old that they know, okay, we need to flee from here. Interpol knows about this, and they've rescued children from plantations, just in case people think, like, oh, I don't know, could be another explanation for all this. I mean, there's documented rescues from international organizations. And I know that Nestle and other chocolate companies, they say, we don't control the farms, we don't control the labor practices because we don't control the farms.

Other industries can and do make an effort to do this. Nestle wouldn't even see, your film or meet with you. By the way, I love that you set up a giant screen across from their headquarters and blasted the audio and the video at their headquarters. They must have loved that. That's a bad Monday for Nestle. Yeah. No, I really enjoyed that moment. But unfortunately, the police did a report in me and said that I'm not welcome in Vive, which is their hometown of Nestle's headquarters in Switzerland. So I'm not allowed to go to that Canton region in Switzerland. That was what I got told by the police at that sequence.

Can they do that? They can ban you from an area. No, they can't do anything. But on the other hand, it's Switzerland. Yeah. Honestly, Switzerland is different. It's a kind of a, its own country in Europe in the middle of. Yeah.

This is where you have been hiding gold from the Nazi times, you know. Oh, yeah. In the past, and you have bank secrets and stuff. So I'm not like surprised about the, way the Swiss are dealing with a problem from outside. Let me just put it that way. We love to think of Switzerland as the home of chocolate watches, you know, friendly, whatever people, mixed cultures. But at the end of the day, there's a lot of stolen Nazi gold, money laundering, and serious issues that go with it. And of course, any country like that

that has hundreds of billions of dollars flowing through it every single month from companies like Nestle, they're not known for putting ethics above money. And I'm saying that as an American, so I realize how hypocritical it probably sounds. But if there's anybody that we can hold hands with in that department, it's Switzerland. Yeah, and the funny thing is that lots of the chocolate headquarters are in Switzerland. Of course. Because then they are not part of the European Union, so they are protected. And none of my films has been shown in Switzerland.

Surprise. Every time, you know, they get the offer of. buying it, they reject it. The reasons are like, this is not what we are looking for and stuff like that. It's ridiculous in a way. But today with online, it doesn't really matter because if it doesn't go out on broadcast, you know, it goes online so they can't stop the information anyway. Exactly. Yeah. Look, after your initial expose chocolate companies, they did start to spend a ton on marketing and whitewashing, their reputation, or I should say greenwashing, we've done a show on this episode 599 on similar things where they do, they sort of label things or say, hey, we're

sending the kids to school, supposedly, we're going to build some local infrastructure. Actually, I was wrong about Nestle's revenue. I think it's 68 billion euros a year, or is it 68 billion euros a year on chocolate alone? On chocolate. Oh, okay, so maybe I did have the original figure, correct, but the chocolate figure alone is 68 billion euros. So paying for a living wage or allowing for pesky luxuries like basic human rights for children in their supply chain, it's well within reach if they actually wanted to do it. All right.

After your initial expose, you go and investigate their new business practice. Of course, just to see if it's real. But then what? The Ivory Coast wouldn't let you back in, right? No. So I had to go undercover again. And I couldn't get, you know, I asked for two years, I asked, oh, the companies for the list of the schools they have been, they're claiming to build and all the

projects. Because I was actually open to see, because they claim that we are doing a lot for fighting against child labor. We are building schools and stuff like that. And I was just saying, hey, please, I would love to go. Could you just send me the list of the schools? They rejected that. And then we decided to say, hey, let's just go.

undercover again and just digging around with my local fixer and see what we can find. And then we did find schools which was like not even half done. The guy who was running the school, he said, well, yeah, they came and we were doing the plans and they did the first foundation of the school and then they disappeared and never came back. Just the schools we went to, it was again just greenwashing. And again, I do not understand. Why is it that people want to lie about it? It's cheaper, right?

Well, it's cheaper. Yeah, but a bit of how can you lie to the consumers? Maybe it's because the consumers really don't care. I don't know. I don't understand because at that time, they knew about me. They knew where I was capable to do. So not giving me the list of the projects they claimed they did was one thing. I didn't understand.

It was in between two elections and there were a civil war in Ivory Coast at that time. That was the reason why we had to pull out. The thing is, they were right. It was in the middle of two presidents that was a civil war. But we were talking about when I saw the school, that was like, I think 14 months later, they had all the time to get back to make what they. promised, but they didn't. Well, they had a built-in excuse, right?

They can say, well, there was a war, and they're not wrong about that, but it's like, well, should we restart this project? Nah, we already got the photos. We already printed out the brochures. If that Mickey guy goes back, we'll just say there was a war, right? I mean, it's really, how did you get back into the country? Did you have them traffic you into the country via the back roads and things like that? I mean, you already know how to get in illegally because you saw them do it with the kids.

No, the thing is, I was banned by the former president. And now a new president was in office. And my local fixer, he told me, no one knows, it's all right. Let's just take the chance. And then we did that. This is the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Mickey Mastradi. We'll be right back. Hey, if you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart, supportive,

considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. To learn more and get links to all of the discounts you hear, all the little sponsor breaks, the people who make the show possible, check out our deals page, Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. You can also always search for a sponsor using the search box on the website as well. That's at Jordan Harbinger.com. Really appreciate it when you do that. Thank you so much for supporting those who support us. It really does keep things moving around here and it makes it possible to continue creating these episodes week after week. Now for the rest of my conversation with Mickey Mistradi. Yeah, you found many of the schools are just concrete shells. I saw the video on that and I thought,

Oh, man, it doesn't have a roof. There's no floor. There's nothing here. I mean, it's a couple of walls with holes in them. I mean, that was really it. And remember when the companies are talking about this in Brosee, in like glossy marketing papers, they never tell this. Yeah.

They just take some nice photos and claiming, you know, this is what we do. And it is difficult to be a consumer then to really see if they are lying or not because, you know, they have. at the pictures from maybe another school or whatever. I don't know, but five places out of a list turned out to be 31, the five schools were all lacking construction when we were there. Some companies had popped up to try and audit the cocoa supply chain. For example, source trust claims to be able to trace fair trade cocoa back to the farm

using these code numbers. But then you visited one of their offices. they picked a sack and showed you how it's traced. Then you're like, well, I'll just pick a random one and you trace it. And then they couldn't do it. And then you picked another one and they couldn't do it. What did you make of that at that point? Because it was pretty obvious they were just like picking the one where they had the system worked

and the rest of them are just the whole thing looks like bullshit. The thing is I remember this so clear because my intention was good. I was really looking for the good example of how you could do this. and I gave them so many chances. Yeah. And I can reveal this now today. The sack they at the end of the clip did fine to match the code I was asking for was not the one. Oh, it wasn't?

No, it wasn't. At that time, that was in 2012. I was just so, it was kind of a hope inside me. Yeah. Because this was the good example. It was not the right one. But I just gave them the credit. which was a mistake at that time, but now I can say it because I've just seen that even the so-called

sustainable sourced cocoa is the same kind of shit, to be honest. So is source trust a front to keep up appearances, or was it just garden variety incompetence that their system didn't work? Or you think it's just it doesn't work at all and it's just a bunch of nonsense for PR? It's a bunch of nonsense. The problem is, because I saw that, you know, I've, We've been over two years ago. We went to fair trade places.

And it is in my newest film. We went to this place where they are covering a thousand plantations. And fair trade comes like once in three years to check. And they don't know where the cocoa bean comes from. It will be mixed up with conventional production. No one really knows. They know the farmers, but they don't know where the beans are from. Right.

Because it's just mixed up. It's a kind of you pay a premium, but for what? Yeah. And that's where my, let's say, my hope did break, because I thought this was the right way to do it. But as it is right now, it does not work. So what about the fair trade seals on, like the things on chocolate, those labels, are they valid at all? Or is it just like, hey, we tried to audit this, but it's bullshit. Well, they paid, so put the frog on it.

Yeah. That's it, huh? Exactly. And I said in Ghana this year, we were checking mandolese cocoa life. It's a green stand. If you go to your local supermarket and find a mandolese chocolate, there's lots of that in US. I went to a specific plantation, which was certified by Cocoa Life. And that Cocoa Life is a Mandela's own brand. It was full of children.

And that was so-called 100% sustainable-sourced cocoa. Oh, man. Yeah, I know it's ridiculous. And remember, for me, it's even worse because I want to find the hope in it. Unfortunately, the system does not work as it stand. So even the sustainable cocoa is not great. But there are like ways to get around it. But I would never go for any chocolate where it doesn't tell me.

on the chocolate bar where the origin of the bean comes from. Because I, for instance, what I do, I buy chocolate from Ecuador or from Peru or South America because cocoa plantations or cocoa production in South America is quite like it's part of the history of South America. It's something you have been using in the food of South American food, the Aztecs, the Maya, has been doing that for three, four thousand years. So it's a kind of the culture. Beware that the cocoa beans came to Africa in the mid-1800 century.

Ah, I didn't know that. No, but that's the thing. No one in Africa cares about cocoa. It's trees which came from South America with the slave trades and stuff. So, and suddenly in 1860s, you know, white people came and say, hey, those cocoa beans, we like to buy them. And they were just saying, literally saying, yeah, if you like, okay, buy it. Because it's not, cocoa beans is not something you use in Africa. It's just a commodity.

It's just something someone wants to buy. In South America, if you go to Mexico, cocoa beans is part of Gila Konka. It's part of the food tradition. Right. So there is a difference between the two places. And child labor in the cocoa industry in South America is, I can't guarantee that there is absolutely no children. But it's not something we have been hearing about.

It's not a problem. So I always go for the cocoa, to talk about, which is from South America. And that's easy to find. And the funny thing is, if it doesn't say anything, it's from Ivory Coast. Really? No one is actually marketing it as this is from Ivory Coast. Right. No one.

So that's the way to come around it. That makes sense. So if you're a consumer and you love chocolate, it's South American chocolate because chances are it doesn't have the same types of problems. And I know people are probably a little confused here. There are auditors who certify the plantations. The problem is, it sounds like this happens one time. every three years or so, how the heck are you going to enforce child labor laws at that scale

and that frequency? It just doesn't make any sense. The farm inspections are so sporadic that that means they're going to be easily evaded. And it would be very impossible for these inspectors to come and audit because there are thousands and thousands of these very small farms and plantations. So essentially, when the certification auditors come, the children get ushered from the field somewhere else and the farmers say there's no kids here. And this is from a Nestle report. This is from a 2017 report from Nestle saying we can't audit all these and they're easily evaded and the farmers deny it happening even though we know it's happening. So it's not even the company saying, hey, none of this is happening. They know that it's happening and they just

say we can't do anything about it, which is somehow worse because you know that's BS. Yeah. And as I said, the cooperative I visited latest. They have like a thousand farms. And how can you check a thousand farms? You don't. You check 100 and you say, whatever, it's fine. Yeah. Right?

You check 10% or less than that. And you say, eh, it's probably fine. And news I got was that a lot of farmers now are removing from fair trade production. It's a premium one. They get a little bit more paid for the cocoa beans. But the problem is the admin, work they need to do is enormous. They can't afford people staff to work in the plantation, but now they have to do a lot of admin work, you know, do documents and stuff like that.

And the price they get more for the premium beans is not enough, so they go back to conventional production again. Because the problem is the price difference between a conventional old production and a premium one is too small. Fair trade doesn't pay enough for it. And that's quite a new problem. There's a lawsuit or there was a lawsuit going in it made it all the way up to the Supreme Court with some escaped, essentially escaped slave children who worked in these plantations and these huge companies, the chocolate companies, Cargill and Nestle, they hired some of the biggest law firms in the United States. And this one dude who's got a two-person firm essentially Terry Cosgrove is his name. They're taking them on. And I used to be in the legal space.

I used to be an attorney myself. So these firms, for other lawyers out there listening, talking about Gibson Dunn, 1,200 lawyers there, Mayor Brown, 1,600 plus lawyers there, just to give people an idea of the resources that these companies are mustering. Obviously, these attorneys are not all working on the chocolate case, but that just gives you an idea of what these chocolate companies are throwing at the fight against two guys who are working pro bono for free on these cases. These are $1,000 an hour lawyers billing. So they would love for this to go on for a decade and a half and bill the entire time because the cases are worth billions of dollars to the chocolate companies. They're just trying to win the case with money. And it's just very, very clear that there's so much money involved that they can afford

to delay this. But it's like the ethical cost is extremely high. I know, and I've read in my research, Mickey, that Cargill has some training against child labor, which is technically illegal on the ground. But it sounds like the training is, hey, make sure you don't have any illegal kids working on your farm. It's just the fox guarding the chicken coop, as we say, over here in the United States. I mean, this is the honor system. It makes absolutely no sense.

No, not at all. And I think if this need to be solved, they need to put much more money into it. Because, of course, there are like programs. Good Weave, for instance, in India is a good example of how they got rid of children working in the carpet. industry, but they need to have a system where they're monitoring this quite with, you know, independent people. You can't have like the company just paying out a third party. It needs to be a system where, you know, you do it because you want to get rid of children.

And at the end of the day, children should not work. They should go to school. If you want to end any poverty, I guess it's quite simple. It starts with school. If you don't have basic school, you don't get out of poverty ever. And that's the first step to take. It's not Cargill telling you are not allowed to use a machete. The funny thing is, I've heard people even in the industry saying,

yeah, but it's not like that difficult. You know, they can help the parents a few hours. But tell me one thing they can do in. in a cocoa field which fits to a child. Working with a machete? Well, no. Working with pesticides? No.

Carrying heavy loads? No. So please just tell me what is it that you think children should do in the fields with the parent, the so-called parents. It's just like we see a lot of explanations instead of solutions. They try to explain every time they get. court by people like me, they try to explain, well, it's not that bad, we're doing this, this and this. But at the end of the day, they don't really do anything to solve the problem.

What I thought in the beginning that journalism could change the whole thing, but I realized it probably can't. I thought that maybe if we had the right laws, that we would be able to change it, but we can't because we have the laws at the moment. In the U.S. you actually also have a law against production produced by forced labor. That's actually a law from 1930s, but the law enforcement, the Custom and Border Department, doesn't really do anything about it. There are like a few cases I have knowledge of, but the problem is it comes down to the politics you have in your country and are you protecting corporate America or are you protecting basic human rights, in my opinion. And that's a big question. It is a big question. And unfortunately,

especially recently, our courts, especially our higher courts, it's sort of the standard operating procedure to protect corporate interests. Whether or not people would agree with that is there's a debate there, I suppose. But at the end of the day, they're going to usually find a reason to side with a corporate interest versus something that is external to the United States, especially, some kind of competing interest. So that's obviously a huge problem. We see that all the time. Let's end on a little bit of a hopeful note here. The EU has recently banned products using forced labor.

What does that mean? I assume that's partly because of cotton from Xinjiang China, but tell me what it means for chocolate. The thing is, they want to force all the 27 countries in the EU to get rid of any projects they try to sell in the EU market can't be produced by forced labor. That means that for child labor in the cocoa industry, they are going to show a supply chain before they can sell anything in the EU. And that's really a big step.

I think it's really like the most positive thing I have been hearing for the past 15 years. Now, we don't know how they're going to secure this because that's law enforcement. In each country, they need. need to make sure that any companies who wants to sell anything in the EU that the supply chain is not contain any production with forced labor. So I don't know how that's going to work, but I think it's the right step. I'm really satisfied about this. So there are like a few things ongoing and I know that there is a couple of lawyers in the

the US who are still filing new cases against the big corporations. And I guess that, of course, they have loads of money to protect themselves. But I don't think that the time right now is for more bad publicity. And I think with the climate changes and the lack of human rights and the war in Russia and everything in one big dish, I think we are facing. new way of thinking. If we have to survive a couple of generations anyway, we need to make changes with the climate. That climate changes is the big, big threat at the moment. And if we don't do anything, if we don't rethink the way we live, we won't be here. Well, at least your grandchildren

won't be here. That's not something I make up. This is, I think, quite common knowledge set by science at the moment. And they were talking about 25 years to 30 years. And so I think there is kind of an understanding that we need to change. And I think this new EU law is in the right direction of what I've just said, that changes is a need now. And I have to believe that we will do that all together. that we need to do something all together.

Otherwise, we will burn up in maybe not hell, but somewhere. Yeah, somewhere right here on Earth. And by the way, I said let's end on a hopeful note. Come on, Mickey. That's not what I meant. You got to follow her to follow instructions. Now, thank you so much for your time. Really enlightening and just an amazing expose of an industry that a lot of people say,

I mean, I'm feeding this stuff to my kids, you know? It's happy. It's those eggs that you open up from cats. Cadbury that have the gross liquid center. I mean, it's on Christmas, and here it is made by some kid who doesn't get to have any time off and works in a field 12 hours a day. I mean, it's just horrible, horrifying. But just as a last note, the good news is we can change this.

Why not doing it? Let's just do it together. Of course we can. Mickey Mistratti, thank you so much. We're going to link to your films and things like that that we can find for public consumption there in the show notes, as well as some resources on how to get slave-free chocolate. And I really appreciate your time and your work in this area. It's really, really enlightening. Thank you for having me.

We've got a preview trailer of our interview with Vince Beiser. It's all about sand. You heard me. Sand. It's actually quite fascinating. There are even sand mafias killing people over sand. If anybody had told me three, four years ago, that I was going to be spending my every waking hour thinking and talking about sand, I would have just laughed. It's actually the most important solid substance on Earth. We use about 50 billion tons of sand every year. That's enough to cover the entire state of California every single year. Every year, we use enough concrete to build a wall 90 feet high and 90 feet across right the way around the planet at the equator. A bunch of sand might get broken off of a mountaintop, washed down into a plane somewhere,

and then that sand gets buried under subsequent geological layers and pushed down under the earth and compressed and turned into sandstone. And then that sandstone may get pushed up again by geologic forces over hundreds of thousands of years and worn away again and again broken down back into grains. So an individual grain of sand can be millions of years old. We're fully eclipsing the rate of creation here. You're probably sitting in a building made of just a huge pile of sand. All the roads connecting all those buildings also made out of sand.

The glass, the windows in all those buildings also made us in. The microchips, the power our computers, our cell phones, all of our other digital goodies, also made from sand. So without sand, there's no modern civilization. And the craziest thing about it is we are starting to run out. For more on why Sand is the next petroleum-like resource and some crazy stories about sand pirates and the black market for sand, check out episode 97 with Vince Beiser right here on the Jordan Harbinger Show.

Woosh, I know this one is a little heavy for those of you, especially those of you, just sitting there eating chocolate for lunch like I did after Halloween, a bunch slash still am doing. Whatever, I lost a bunch of weight. Don't give me any grief. A lot of what I did to prep for this episode is in the show notes. A few documentaries in there that you can. can watch online, including the chocolate war, which may or may not be available on Amazon yet. I won't say insightful, but it is, but it's also just kind of like, oh, man, these poor kids.

The kids describe beatings and torture where they get their feet cut with razors, and then they pour hot pepper and salt into the wounds, and then they send these kids to work barefoot in a chocolate plantation. It's just so awful to think about, by the way, after pledging to eradicate child labor, chocolate companies still cannot identify the farms where all their cocoa comes from. don't know. It's not only that they're willfully ignoring this problem. They just don't even know where this is coming from. And I think part of that is by design, right, plausible deniability. Why give yourself the accountability of having to inspect all these different chocolate farms when

you can say, yeah, we buy our cocoa from a major supplier. We don't know what happens up to that point. And then just, yeah, wash your hands of the whole thing. They have no idea where their cocoa comes from, let alone whether child laborer was used in producing it. And I'm talking about Mars, maker of M&Ms and Milky Way, they can trace only 24% of its cocoa back to farms. Hershey, the maker of kisses and Reese's, less than half their chocolate can be traced back. Nestle can trace back 49% of its global cocoa supply to farms. So minimum half is just, I'm trying not to make a crappy pun here, just dark chocolate. They don't know where it comes from.

There's no way I could avoid that pun, sorry. They cannot trace it back. Between 50 and 75%. Absolutely crazy. You can get a list of model chocolate producers that are doing things right at slavefree chocolate.org. These are places that have sort of done the legwork and finding the right stuff. Anyway, some good news here. I'd also heard that the kids in the village can't go to school, obviously, because there's a lack of classrooms. There's a lack of resources in the right areas. So I was thinking, all right, if these people are making so little money from farming, surely labor is cheap. Materials are natural. Those are cheap for the most part, right? So maybe we can use the cash general. from this episode to fund building a school in Ghana for those kids. And I know this is a drop in the bucket. It's not going to solve the problem. It's not going to address the greater issue here, but this is about the kids. And the answer is, yes, we can do something about this. So I've already put in motion the mechanism here to build a school in Ghana, in an area where cocoa is harvested, and I'm going to be donating the funds

for that. I'm just going to take it out of my pocket. I could not be more excited about this. So by listening to and sharing the Jordan Harbinger show, not just this episode, but any episode of the show, you're hopefully increasing our sponsorship revenues, which is where I'm going to get the cash to build this school. So yeah, don't skip those ads, folks. Support our sponsors. Your time and money are going to have a good use, at least this time. I will also be blowing some of it on beer and sushi, full disclosure, but only after I cut the check for this school in rural Ghana, promise. So I'm stoked for that.

In fact, once I build this school, I'm not going to do it myself, but once I donate the funds to build this school, I am going to go to Ghana and check it out, and I'm going to dedicate it to my mom who is a teacher, and I'm going to take her there. And, well, I'm going to take my family there too, and we're going to check it out. So I'm, yeah, pretty freaking excited about that. And I hope that we can send some kids to school who otherwise wouldn't be able to go to school. So, yeah, a little bit of good news here. Again, I know it's a drop in the bucket, but it's just something I thought would be awesome to do, and it's kind of a dream come true to be. be able to do something like this. So know that you buying a mattress or some supplements or whatever it is that I am shilling on any given episode, some of that is going to go to the school. So you can pat

yourself on the back for that. Big thank you to Mickey Mistrotti. All things Mickey and all of the slave-free chocolate links in the documentaries and all that stuff are going to be linked in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. Transcripts in the show notes. Videos go up on YouTube. Advertisers, deals and discount codes for school building purposes or otherwise all at Jordan Harbinger.com. slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support this show and are by extension supporting kids learning in rural Ghana instead of frigging hidden chocolate pods with a machete all day. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn if you want to say something, hopefully something nice. I'm teaching you

how to connect with great people and manage relationships using the same system, software, and tiny habits that I use every single day. It's our six-minute networking course that course is free. It's at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. I'm teaching you how to dig the well before you get thirsty. Build those relationships before you need them. Many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to the course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company.

This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Hey, remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know a chocaholic or somebody else who might be interested in this subject, please do share this episode with them. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with the people that you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen. And we'll see you next time.

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