“Chocolate brought Americans sweet respite in 2020—more than usual, according to recent research into pandemic purchasing. But the great irony in our chocolate indulgence is that it’s also a product borne out of great suffering. “ - Simran Sethi, The Counter (2021)
Behind the sweet taste of chocolate exists a bitter reality: a long history of child trafficking and labor issues driven by the Big Chocolate industry that, despite decades of promises from the industry, continues to grow. While the abuse is well-documented, legal challenges around accountability have been murky.
Join MOFAD on November 8th at the Makers’ Studio in Chelsea Market for an evening with Terrence Collingsworth, founder and Executive Director of the International Rights Advocates and lawyer for some of the most high-profile human rights cases of children suffering abuses in cocoa supply chains, and Clay Gordon, author of Discover Chocolate and founder of TheChocolateLife.com and chocophile.com.
Gordon will speak with Collingsworth about his work on the front lines defending international human rights cases against Nestle, Cargill, Mars, Hershey, and other major chocolate companies. We’ll have the chance to watch a clip from The Chocolate War, a 2022 documentary that illuminates Collingsworth’s fight against the problematic aspects of the chocolate industry.
We’ll finish the evening on a sweet note with Gordon leading a tasting of three chocolate bars from Askinosie, a Missouri-based company committed to direct-trade and ethical business practices. Askinosie was named “The best chocolate in the United States” by Food & Wine, and was an amicus party to Collingsworth's Supreme Court case.
Tickets include the cost of three bars of chocolate from Askinosie and a glass of wine.
This program is made possible by our sponsor, Chelsea Market.
Bittersweet is the first in a four-part series exploring Indigenous Foodways that will take place at the Makers’ Studio in Chelsea Market.
TERRENCE COLLINGSWORTH
Terry Collingsworth is the founder and Executive Director of the International Rights Advocates. Before becoming a lawyer, Terry worked for five years as an overhead crane operator in a copper mill in Cleveland, Ohio. This experience introduced him to the importance of trade unions and the need for rigorous protection of worker rights. He went to law school to acquire the skills needed to address the lack of worker protections and basic respect for human rights in the global economy. He has been practicing law in the United States for over 35 years, and for the last 27, has specialized in international human rights litigation. He has worked all over the world, from India and West Africa to most countries in South America, addressing a wide range of human rights issues.
In 1996, he filed John Roe I v. Unocal, the first human rights case filed against a corporation under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). Unocal partnered with the military regime in Burma, which used the forced labor of villagers to construct a gas pipeline. After successfully litigating and clarifying the key ATS issues, the case was settled before trial. He has been involved in most of the subsequent corporate human rights cases filed in U.S. courts.
Terry has recently focussed on cases preventing multinational companies from violating the human rights of children who are forced by poverty and other factors to work in global supply chains. Representative cases are Coubaly et. al v. Nestle et. al, No. 1:21 CV 00386 (eight Malian former enslaved children have sued Nestle, Cargill, Mars, Hershey, Barry Callebaut, Mondelez and Olam under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act [TVPRA] for forced child labor and trafficking in their cocoa supply chains in Cote D’Ivoire); John Doe 1 et al. v. Nestle, SA and Cargill, Case No. CV 05-5133-SVW (six Malian former enslaved children sued Nestle and Cargill under the ATS for using child slaves in their cocoa supply chains in Cote D’Ivoire); and John Doe 1 et. al v. Apple et. al, No. CV 1:19-cv-03737(15 families sued Apple, Tesla, Dell, Microsoft, and Google under the TVPRA for knowingly joining a supply chain for cobalt in the DRC that relies upon forced and trafficked child labor).
With Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kailash Satyarthi, Terry founded Rugmark (now Goodweave), an independent monitoring and certification system to prevent child labor in the hand-knotted carpet sector of South Asia. A unique feature of the program is a successful and sustainable rehabilitation and education program for children rescued from slavery during the monitoring process.
Terry attended Duke University School of Law and has taught at numerous law schools all over the world. He enjoys running, hiking, snowboarding, and literature.
CLAY GORDON
Clay became interested in chocolate in 1994 after discovering single-origin chocolate bars made by the Bonnat family. This inspired him to begin a seven-year quest to become the world’s first professional chocolate critic, a milestone he achieved in the Spring of 2001. Since then he has been actively promoting an awareness and understanding of the entire cocoa to chocolate supply web as an independent observer and consultant – with extensive personal experience gained through numerous farm visits in origins throughout the Americas to Africa, visits to specialty and industrial chocolate factories on four continents, and observing hundreds of world-class chefs, chocolatiers, and chocolate makers in professional kitchens and teaching situations around the globe.
Since 2001, Clay has also been a highly visible and influential advocate of teaching chocolate appreciation through his work at his pioneering rating/review website chocophile.com, his 2007 book Discover Chocolate, via TheChocolateLife.com, and through hundreds of tasting classes and lectures both in-person and online.
Through his work on TheChocolateLife and related online activities since 2008, his presence at conferences around the world, and his network of professional colleagues, Clay maintains an up-to-date understanding of cocoa and chocolate market segmentation and market requirements – all the while tasting a lot of chocolate.
By fostering community in all his efforts, Clay has built a global following for his work and ideas. He has been a featured speaker at dozens of industry conferences, from Amsterdam and London to La Paz, Lima, and São Paulo. He has been a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show and his opinions have been seen in the pages of The New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, and dozens of other print, radio, television, and online media outlets.
CHELSEA MARKET
Located in the heart of New York City's Meatpacking District, Chelsea Market is a food and retail marketplace with a global perspective