Chocolate-eating Dutchman pleads for jail sentence

A DUTCH journalist asked an Amsterdam court yesterday to convict him for eating chocolate, saying by doing so he was benefiting from child slavery on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast.

Teun van de Keuken, 35, is seeking a jail sentence to raise consumer awareness and force the cocoa and chocolate industry to take tougher measures to stamp out child labour.

“If I am found guilty of this crime, any chocolate consumer can be prosecuted after that. I hope that people would stop buying chocolate and thus hurt the sales of big corporations and make them do something about the problem,” Mr van de Keuken said.