Could the treat we know to be sinfully delicious be just that: Sinful? Chocolate is associated with Valentine's, insatiable appetites and a general feeling of gluttony. But should we add to the list: human rights violations?

• Quick facts on Cocoa's bitter truth

More than a quarter of a million African children are behind the West African cocoa industry, according to a new comprehensive survey from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture.

"We're aware that we may have vastly underestimated the numbers,” says David Mowbray, a Canadian with IITA.

The organization is based in West Africa and funded by the United Nations and the World Bank. It surveyed 1,500 farms in the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon, trying to uncover who is behind the cocoa industry.

The survey found more than 284,000 children are working in hazardous conditions.

The IITA found that children harvest the cocoa beans from farms in the jungle using machetes. They also are left to spray crops with pesticides and insecticides, without masks, rubber boots or proper equipment.

What's not apparent in the surveys, but is widely documented, is physical abuse.

"Some experience beatings,” says Adrienne Clements, director of Save the Children Canada. "I know. We have seen children come back across into Mali who have been beaten. "

The reports of abuse sparked the charity to open a safe house in Huron So, Mali, just across the border from the Ivory Coast.

Canada's chocolate addiction

Canada's chocolate industry contributed to the problem, by buying nearly $47 million worth of cocoa products last year. But the industry boasts it condemns all abuse of child labour practices.

"There was no idea that this was taking place," says John Rowsome, president of the Confectionery Manufacturers'Association of Canada. "The association and all of its members condemn absolutely and completely any abuse of child or labour practices in the growing of cocoa and the harvesting of cocoa."

But when it comes to satisfying the Western appetite for chocolate, West African countries are still where Canadian manufacturers turn for cocoa beans. Seventy per cent of the world’s chocolate is harvested in countries such as Cote D'Ivoire, Cameroon and Nigeria. Cote D'Ivoire produces 45 per cent of that. Countries paralleling the equator provide the perfect growing conditions.

In 1995, world cocoa prices plummeted. To remain competitive and keep chocolate a cheap treat, the 3.6 million cocoa farmers in the Ivory Coast had to keep their bean prices low, and their labour costs even lower. So it's now commonplace for families to use their children and their relatives’ children as workers on the farm. The IITA survey found that 12,500 children were working on the farms where they had no relatives.

"We could identify some children who, we believe, had been traded in someway and were not from their own families and did not have the freedom to leave the farms on which they were working."

Open wounds, bleeding shoulders

"They're eating my flesh," said a young African man to a British documentary crew that sought to uncover what was really behind the chocolate industry.

The crew took pictures of kids with open wounds and bleeding shoulders, broken under the weight of carrying bags of cocoa beans. They documented small sheds where the teens said they lived without running water and scarce food.

"For some of them, they have to carry 60-70 kilos of [beans]. And as a result, I've seen many of them with open wounds that never, never [heal]…they're always open,” says Michel Laroche, a Canadian who runs the Canadian safe house in Mali.

The house reports that more than 200 children have taken refuge there since December. The kids rarely get to reunite with their families, but do get psychological care, food, shelter and health care.

"Some of them will never go home again, so they need to get into training for skills so they can run small businesses or go back to school. So we assist them with that as well," says Clements from Save the Children Canada's Toronto headquarters.

"Most of them have never tasted chocolate. They get the bean. That's what they deal with. They don't even get the pleasure of enjoying a chocolate bar."

Child labour on cocoa farms is not news to North American chocolate manufacturers. The Canadian industry is behind an international effort that would see the trade regulated, and have fair trade, slave-free chocolate certified by 2005.

"From our perspective, it's not enough,” says Clements. “And it's not soon enough; 2005 is still three and a half years away. There are a lot of kids who are going to end up on these farms. Some of them may not survive it; some of them may, but with trauma. It will affect them for the rest of their lives."

Instead, Save the Children Canada is encouraging the Canadian government to create a child trafficking bill, one that would make it illegal for crops to be imported into Canada from countries what support child trafficking.

Save the Children Canada is also urging Canadian consumers to look for cocoa products that are free of child slave labour, and buy chocolate with the "Fair Trade Certified" logo.