Jail me, urges chocolate-eating Dutchman

A Dutch journalist asked an Amsterdam court on Friday to convict him for eating chocolate, saying by doing so he was benefiting from child slavery on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast.

Teun van de Keuken, is seeking a jail sentence in order to raise awareness and force the cocoa industry to take tougher measures on child labour. "If I am found guilty of this crime, any chocolate consumer can be prosecuted after that. I hope that people would stop buying chocolate and thus hurt the sales of big corporations and make them do something about the problem," van de Keuken said. Ivory Coast, the world's No. 1 cocoa producer is the target of allegations by international rights groups that children are working as slaves. He travelled to Burkina Faso to find former child slaves who he said were sold by their poor parents or lured by merchants to work on Ivory Coast. Van de Keuken said he has now brought one of these former child slaves to testify in court against him. "We profit from these people and they get almost nothing in return. As consumers we are also responsible for these atrocities," van de Keuken told Reuters. He urged consumers to choose fair trade chocolate but warned it was often difficult to trace the origin of cocoa beans. It should be pointed out I suppose that not all chocolate comes from bad sources. I guess he is accomplishing his goal, because I am aware of it now. And so are you.