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Current Republican candidate for Minnesota Governor, Jeff Johnson, was employed as a corporate attorney for Cargill from 1997-2001. According to the “About Jeff” bio on Johnson’s website, he worked at Cargill, Inc. “to handle employment and labor law matters.” It just so happens that some of the employees at Cargill around this time were child slave laborers, forced to work in Cargill’s supply chain.

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Cargill is a large multinational corporation based in Minnetonka, MN. It is primarily in the business of buying, trading, and distributing agricultural commodities around the world. Some of these agricultural commodities include fruits such as oranges, cocoa (for the production of chocolate) and palm oil; all of which have been found to have used child slave labor to produce said crops. In a June 2001 article about this child slave labor, the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote that:

“The company ships directly from Ivory Coast to plants in the United States and Europe. Sells under its own name and under the brand Wilbur Chocolates Co. It processes cocoa beans to make chocolate, cocoa powder and cocoa liquor and then sells them to chocolate manufacturers and food processors large and small around the globe.”

International reports of child slave labor in the production of these commodities began primarily in the late 1990s, but continue today. In 1998, UNICEF released a report that claimed farmers in the Ivory Coast of Africa were using widespread child slave labor, and were trafficking the child slaves from poorer surrounding countries including Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin and Togo. In 2000, the U.S. State Department released its yearly human rights report which claimed that approximately 15,000 child between 9 and 12 years old had been trafficked and sold into slavery to produce cotton, coffee, and cocoa in the Ivory Coast of Africa.

In May 2003, the International Labor Rights Fund sued the United States Customs Service for “breaking American trade law and allowing African picked by indentured child labor to be imported into this country.” Terry Collingsworth, the head of the ILRF said the cocoa was purchased by “large international food firms like Nestle, Cargill, and Archer Daniels Midland Company”. The ILRF wanted the Customs service to stop these companies from importing cocoa from the Ivory Coast and penalize companies involved.