Naming and faming: how the Chocolate Scorecard is fighting slavery in cocoa supply chains

Cocoa beans and pod, at the heart of chocolate production, represent the systemic challenges the Chocolate Scorecard tackles — from child labour to supply chain transparency. Credit: Shutterstock

2025 marked publication of the sixth annual Chocolate Scorecard.

The Scorecard is an independent assessment of the chocolate industry. It considers and scores the approach of individual businesses to issues of sustainability including the use of child labour, forced labour, deforestation and pesticide use.

The resulting Annual Scorecard – published at Easter, just as our appetite for chocolate peaks – ranks companies using a traffic light system with Green for industry leaders, through Yellow and Amber to Red, for those with a long way to go.

Why the Chocolate Scorecard is needed

I met with Fuzz Kitto, part of the team from Be Slavery Free, who co-founded the scorecard and who still lead it. With Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade already so well established as certifying chocolate, my first question to Fuzz was why the Scorecard was needed.

‘Certification is just the starting point,’ Fuzz explains. ‘An audit conducted on the square root of the number of farms in a coop every three years will give you some helpful, basic information but the coverage and depth are inadequate if your goal is to meaningfully improve conditions on the ground.’

Cocoa in crisis

And the conditions on the ground for the majority of cocoa farmers is shocking. Cocoa is in crisis with prices surging as supply falls. Whilst as consumers we often experience that as smaller bars for higher prices, at the heart of the crisis are cocoa farmers in West Africa. In Ghana, chocolate production fell by 31% from 2022/23 to 2023/24 and in Cote d’Ivoire it fell by 22% in the same period. The triple impact of climate change, illegal mining activity and a surge in pests and disease because of climate change are leaving farmers destitute.

The struggle for survival is having a particularly brutal impact on children. As part of their assessment, staff working for the Chocolate Scorecard visit farms. On one farm in Cote d’Ivoire they met Baku. The eldest of seven children, Baku left his family farm when a trafficker posing as a labour agent offered him the chance to earn enough money to support his mother and siblings following the death of his father.

Baku was trafficked illegally through Ghana to Cote d’Ivoire and had been held there as a slave for five years. He had received no pay and was scarred by the machetes and sticks he used to break open the cocoa pods. He did not even know the name of his village or how to get back. With support from the NGO, Solidaridad, Baku’s family was traced and he was reunited with his mother.

‘The reality is multiple children in are in this situation across Western Africa,’ Fuzz says. ‘Baku had never tasted chocolate. All he knew about the product was that “his blood had gone into making it”.

The vast majority of children trapped in slave labour are children of impoverished farmers, working either on their family farm or trafficked as Baku was. If farmers cannot make a living income, how can we eradicate slavery, never mind expect them to buy less harmful pesticides or invest into innovation that might future proof or diversify their crops.’

Driving systemic change

‘The problem is systemic,’ Fuzz continues, ‘and it needs a systemic solution. Finding and rescuing individual children like Baku is what drives us, but it is not enough. At the Chocolate Scorecard, our goal is not to run an ambulance service at the bottom of a cliff. It is not even to put a fence around the edge of the cliff. We want to redirect the road away from the cliff. We want fundamental change.’

Key to that change, Fuzz tells me, is transparency. Still only 50% of chocolate is traceable but, ‘if you don’t know where the chocolate is coming from, you don’t know what is happening there and you can’t do anything meaningful,’ says Fuzz. That’s why the worst possible award to win when the scorecard is released is the ‘Bad Egg’ for lack of transparency – awarded in 2025 to Cadbury owner, Mondelez.

‘We work at every step of the chocolate supply chain,’ Fuzz explains, ‘from growers, traders and producers to manufacturers and retailers. That means we can create pressure and momentum throughout the chain.’

But the pressure that the team want to assert comes hand in hand with support. All data in the scorecard is anonymised with participating companies able to see their own scores in a private area of the website and compare themselves to the median against each of the seven areas assessed. The team then offer individual feedback to every participating company. 95% of companies accept and hear from the team how they can improve and often who can help them.

‘We love it when we know companies are setting themselves KPIs to improve their ranking on the Scorecard,’ says Fuzz. ‘Our goal is to celebrate those who are leading the way and to set – and then continually raise – the standards across the industry as a whole.’

And this positive approach is getting results. 2023 was the first year a company reporting to finding and remediating forced labour in their supply chain. In 2024, 18% admitted to this and in 2025 it rose again to 22%.

‘Acknowledging the issue is progress in itself,’ says Fuzz.

But over and above transparency, action is needed. And ultimately, that comes down to us as consumers.

Fuzz talks with excitement about a tool the team partners are developing for next year that will allow consumers to hold their phone cameras across chocolate sections in shops it will recognise chocolate products and she a colour showing where they were scored on the Chocolate Scorecard. With knowledge comes the power to demand change.

‘It comes down to values,’ says Fuzz, ‘if you are buying chocolate grown by slaves, you are supporting slavery.’

With the fight against slavery in chocolate so central to the mission of the Scorecard, it is fitting that Tony’s Chocolonely have ranked top every year. Founded in exasperation by a media company who were horrified by the discovery that slaves were involved in the production of almost all chocolate, the brand was created in 2006 with the specific goal of eradicating slavery in chocolate. The ‘lonely’ in the name reflects the fact that, at the time, the company felt entirely alone in caring about this. They were in fact sued by another chocolate company for claiming that their chocolate was slavery free – at the time it was inconceivable to the industry that this would be possible. But Tony’s won their legal case and are now the largest and fastest growing chocolate brand in Holland. They have made their Open Chain ‘bean to machine’ sourcing available to companies including Waitrose and Sainsburys. In the latest scorecard, Tony’s received the Good Egg award for excellence and transparency.

Tony’s Chocolonely, recognised for transparency and ethical sourcing in cocoa, has led the Chocolate Scorecard rankings every year. Credit: Shutterstock

But Fuzz is keen to showcase the progress that some of the major brands are making too. The six biggest chocolate companies produce 70% of the world’s chocolate. Change at scale relies on them engaging, as well as on ethically-led start ups disrupting the market.

Mars Wrigley (who own Mars, Snickers, Maltesers and Twix among other household names) were recognised in 2025 for their work supporting women. They are also the company who identified the genome for cocoa and made it available on an open source basis so that others could produce climate resistant strains of cocoa. Fuzz also praises Nestle for the way their Cocoa Plan is turning around so many practices in the company and are a leader in child labour elimination.

‘There is too often silence when companies who have faced a lot of lobbying make improvements. We want to highlight when solid progress is being made so people can see what good looks like. We like to name and fame those who are doing well.’

To learn more about the companies that are leading the way, as well as see which are trailing behind, you can visit https://www.chocolatescorecard.com

Meet the author 

Ruth Davison, Chief Storyteller at Our Carbon, interviewed Liz Warner, CEO and Founder of Different Kind. 

Our Carbon supports businesses in achieving product-level granularity in their carbon audits. The company helps businesses make decisions that are better for both the planet and their operations, while also sourcing stories that inspire.