Child labor probed in Ivory Coast’s cocoa fields

Little has changed in the decade since the Swiss company and other major chocolate makers signed a US-brokered international agreement in September 2001 to rid their supply chains of child laborers.
Now, Nestle says it is joining the Fair Labor Association, a group that evolved out of a US presidential task force in the Clinton White House, to probe cocoa fields that supply its products, checking for abuses.
FLA says its audit will be independent, with unannounced visits to a sampling of farms. The results will be made public in spring 2012.