Everyone's heard of blood diamonds right?  Basically, millions of dollars are made from the illegal, slave labor of diamond mining.  Well evidently, chocolate is no different.  Details of not a delicious nature after the jump.

V-D Day is here and chocolates are a popular and delicious treat.  I love chocolate.  Actually, last night I made chocolate covered strawberry's and I did NOT skimp, I bought Ghirardelli.  Only the best for my Valentine.  As it seems I'm not the only one in love with chocolate:

As chocolatiers plan for one of their biggest sales weeks of the year, human rights activists are stepping up efforts to make consumers think twice before purchasing the traditional box of chocolates for their sweethearts for Valentine's Day on Monday.

Yes, it said human rights.  There's an issue of child labor laws afoot:

One online campaign is aimed at raising awareness of the cocoa trade in Ivory Coast, which is helping to prop up the pariah regime of incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo, while another focuses on ending the alleged use of child labor by growers in West Africa, which produces about two-thirds of the world's cocoa.

There's no doubt, child labor sucks and it's just not right.  So since none of us US of A-ican's have any clout in Africa, activists are targeting the chocolate providers here in the US, like Hersey's.

Activist group Green America is urging consumers to send a "valentine" to U.S.-based Hershey, or e-mails directly to its executives, urging the use of cocoa that has "been certified to be free from the worst forms of abusive child labor."  As of Monday, Green America said over 10,000 e-mails had been sent to Hershey executives.

This is a good start, but now that you know this will you stop buying chocolate until laws are changed in Africa?  Do you even care?  Or is your love of chocolate just too much to give up.   For 5,000 Snake VIP Points answer this poll.

More From 98.3 The Snake