Coordinate Cocoa Sector Activities — Institutions told

Managing Campaigner of Ecocare Ghana, Mr Obed Owusu Addai has made a call to various government institutions and agencies to coordinate their various activities in the cocoa sector to ensure a more responsible chocolate production.

Speaking at the launch of this year's Chocolate Scorecard in Accra, Mr. Owusu Addai regretted that the segmentation of cocoa-sector activities by the various institutions is not helping efforts at ensuring a more effective impact on meeting the criteria set out for responsible chocolate production.

He mentioned institutions such as the Ministries of Employment and Labour, Lands and Natural Resources, Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), as well as other NGOs that are all undertaking various uncoordinated projects to meet the Chocolate Scorecard thematic area requirements.

"Chocolate is a sweet treat that we often share with people we love to celebrate a special occasion, or just to indulge in a sweet moment. But often the conditions that it's made in, are far from sweet," Mr. Owusu Addai stated, lamenting that, in spite of improvement in companies adherence to the requirements of the thematic areas, farmer poverty remains high among cocoa farmers.

This, he attributed to low levels of Living Income paid to farmers who produce the raw materials that set the industry in motion.

He reminded the key players of a new regulation by the European Union (EU) that would soon restrict cocoa or cocoa products that do not meet the criteria, from entering their market.

Mr. Owusu Addai called for a concerted effort to eliminate farmer-poverty, through the payment of true living income to cocoa farmers.

He equally appealed to Non-Governmental Organizations(NGOs) and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to work together with other stakeholders in the sector to give farmers what they truly merit and make the production of chocolate and other cocoa products acceptable.

The Chocolate Scorecard is an annual assessment of the chocolate producing companies' performance in six thematic areas, namely, Traceability and Transparency, Living Income for Farming Families, Child and Forced Labour, Deforestation and Climate Change, Agroforestry practices, and Chemical and Pesticide Management.

Chocolate producing companies that perform well in the areas are rated as meeting the criteria for clean chocolate. This is the fifth edition of Chocolate Scorecard.