"Ninth Circuit Sides With Mars in Slave Labor Dispute", 4 June 2018

Candy maker Mars Inc. doesn’t have to disclose that the raw ingredient used to make its candy bars might have been a product of child slave labor, the Ninth Circuit ruled Monday.  “In the absence of any affirmative misrepresentations by the manufacturer, we hold that the manufacturers do not have a duty to disclose the labor practices in question, even though they are reprehensible, because they are not physical defects that affect the central function of the chocolate products,” U.S. Circuit Judge A. William Tashima wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel...Like many other chocolate manufacturers, Mars sources at least some of its beans from the Ivory Coast, where children labor on cocoa farms using machetes and chemicals to harvest the raw ingredient for chocolate...But the labor practices used to make chocolate are not a physical product defect for which California law requires disclosure, Tashima wrote...