Senators: Block forced labor cocoa imports

   Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in a letter urged Homeland Security Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan to use statutory authority to investigate and block the entry into the United States of cocoa products made with forced labor and to pursue criminal investigations, where appropriate, related to the use of forced labor to produce goods imported into the U.S.
   “In the global cocoa industry, children perform the backbreaking work of wielding machetes, carrying heavy loads and other onerous tasks,” the senators wrote in the letter, which was submitted Friday and announced in a press release Tuesday. “The prevalence of exploitative child labor has been a defining characteristic of the sector for decades.”
   Brown and Wyden pointed to a June 5 report in The Washington Post titled “Cocoa’s child laborers,” which they said “appears to verify” with firsthand accounts and “photographic proof” that the West African cocoa supply chain relies on indentured child labor.
   The senators noted that the U.S. imported $608 million of cocoa beans and $100 million of cocoa paste from the Ivory Coast last year and said “it is clear” that at least some of the imports were produced with forced child labor, given the prevalence of forced child labor in that country’s cocoa sector.
   Specifically, Brown and Wyden are calling for Customs and Border Protection to issue a withhold release order, in line with 19 USC 1307, against cocoa products from the Ivory Coast not demonstrated to be from sources free of child labor.
   “Forced child labor is too ingrained in that country’s industry to attempt to single out specific cocoa farms or producers as bad actors,” Brown and Wyden wrote.
   The senators also are urging the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate any such CBP enforcement efforts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to determine whether a criminal investigation is warranted.