Ebola threatens chocolate
By BILL TOMSON | 10/12/14 7:05 AM EDT Updated: 10/12/14 12:04 PM EDT


Ebola is threatening much of the world’s chocolate supply.

Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer of cacao, the raw ingredient in M&M’s, Butterfingers and Snickers Bars, has shut down its borders with Liberia and Guinea, putting a major crimp on the workforce needed to pick the beans that end up in chocolate bars and other treats just as the harvest season begins. The West African nation of about 20 million — also known as Côte D’Ivoire — has yet to experience a single case of Ebola, but the outbreak already could raise prices.

The world’s chocolate makers have taken notice.

The World Cocoa Foundation is working now to collect large donations from Nestlé, Mars and many of its 113 other members for its Coca Industry Response to Ebola Initiative. The initiative hasn’t been publicly unveiled, but the WCF plans to announce details Wednesday, during its annual meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, on how the money will fuel Red Cross and Caritas Internationalis work to help the infected and staunch Ebola’s spread.

..............................................

Ivory Coast, which produces about 1.6 million metric tons of cacao beans per year — roughly 33 percent of the world’s total, according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization — closed its borders in August to Guinea and Liberia. More than 8,000 have been diagnosed with Ebola, and nearly 4,000 have died in those two countries and Sierra Leone. Next to Ivory Coast is Ghana, the world’s third-largest producer of cacao beans — 879,348 metric tons per year — or 15 percent of the world’s total.

..............................................


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/eb...l#ixzz3G1fAQz5P

Next it might hit wagu beef ....

Quote: Frank Cannon wrote in post #10

---

Zitat

---

Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer of cacao, the raw ingredient in M&M’s, Butterfingers and Snickers Bars, has shut down its borders with Liberia and Guinea, putting a major crimp on the workforce needed to pick the beans that end up in chocolate bars and other treats just as the harvest season begins.

---

So.....Liberians and Guineans doing the work Ivoryites won't do?

---

Yup ... you see there is this world wide phenomenon in which natives of a country are not willing to perform certain tasks and are replaced by cheaper more desperate imported labor. The colloquial name is 'The Race to the Bottom".