As the Ivory Coast produces 43 per cent of the world's cocoa, it is likely almost half the chocolate products sold in Australia could be linked to child slavery. In the last financial year, Victorian chocolate manufacturers alone imported 3 million kilograms of Ivory Coast cocoa paste.

The Confectionary Manufacturers Association — of which Nestle, Cadbury Schweppes and Mars Confectionery are members — cannot confirm if chocolate sold here has passed through the hands of child slaves. But they can offer no guarantees that the chocolate coating Australia's three biggest-selling bars — Cherry Ripe, Kit Kat and Mars — does not contain slave-tainted cocoa. Association spokesman David Greenwood said it was notoriously difficult to identify children held as slaves or bonded workers because most plantations were family businesses in which children have traditionally laboured alongside their parents. Adding to the confusion were large numbers of children moving to the Ivory Coast to escape the desperate poverty in neighbouring Mali, he said.

But the Salvation Army's anti-slavery co-ordinator, social justice director Captain Danielle Strickland, says this approach is not good enough. She believes manufacturers have a responsibility to urgently find out who produces their cocoa. "Given that Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) produces 43 per cent of the world's cocoa you could say there is a 43 per cent chance your favourite chocolate bar has some beans produced by child slaves," she said.

"There is no doubt the issue is complex, but if you are producing something you have a responsibility to find out what you are buying." The Australian Fair Trade Association and welfare organisations such as Oxfam and World Vision also want Australian chocolate lovers to start thinking about the suffering behind the indulgent treat. Australians are the world's fourth highest consumers of chocolate, gobbling down an average 10 Easter eggs and between nine and 11 kilograms of chocolate per person a year.

But in the Ivory Coast, farmers earn less for a kilo of cocoa beans than we pay for a Snickers bar. "Chocolate is the perfect case study for urban awareness of our connection to food producers," said Anne Lanyon, co-ordinator of the Columban Centre for Peace, Ecology and Justice, which promotes consumer awareness to schoolchildren. "It is our responsibility to be aware."

Australian Bureau of Statistics and Customs documents confirm that Australians are among the world's biggest consumers of Ivory Coast and Ghanaian-based chocolate directly imported as cocoa beans, paste, powder, butter and liquor. Additional millions of dollars worth of Ivory Coast, Ghanaian, other West African, Malaysian and Indonesian cocoa is imported via Singapore, the cocoa processing hub of South-East Asia. In 2001, the international news agency Knight Ridder exposed the use of child slaves on Ivory Coast and Ghana cocoa farms. It led the US Congress to draft legislation in which the chocolate manufacturing industry agreed to a voluntary protocol to end abusive and forced child labour on cocoa farms by July 2005. But little has changed, says the US-based International Labor Rights Fund.

"The cocoa companies trumpeted a few pilot programs, but continue to purchase and reap profits from child labour cocoa," the fund reports. "These child workers labour for long, punishing hours, using dangerous tools and facing frequent exposure to dangerous pesticides as they travel great distances in the gruelling heat.

"Those who labour as slaves must also suffer frequent beatings and other cruel treatment." A recent Pilot Labour Survey in Cocoa Production in Ghana found 2.47 million children aged between five and seven are being used in economic activities across 600,000 small farming communities. But solving the issue of child slavery will not be simple, according to Mr Greenwood. "(Slavery) is a very emotive issue, so there is a perception that everybody is in an abusive situation," he said.

"It is a matter of a few thousand slaves — which is abhorrent and should not exist — but that is on a scale of 1.5 to 2 million farms. "Boycotts will not help anybody. Hand-outs to people without change will achieve nothing."

International chocolate manufacturers have pledged to introduce a form of approved labour certification for cocoa farmers from mid-2008. The Ivory Coast Government has pledged to reform its cocoa sector before the end of March 2008 and last month froze the bank account of the Coffee and Cocoa Farmers' Development Fund, citing corruption and embezzlement of money meant for growers.