Cocoa beans from deforested areas in Liberia are potentially making their way into the supply chains of some of the world’s bestselling chocolates, a new investigation by campaign group Global Witness has claimed.
Analysis of satellite imagery, coupled with on-the-ground reporting, extensive insider interviews and trade data analysis, revealed an “opaque, untraceable cocoa supply chain”, the group said.
Supply chain mapping by Global Witness claimed the likes of Hershey, Mondelez, Nestlé, Unilever and Mars, through their mass balance purchasing practices, were potentially exposed to cocoa sourced from these areas, suggested the NGO.
The mass balancing model used by accreditation schemes such as Rainforest Alliance allowed companies to “mix traceable, certified cocoa with untraceable beans from multiple sources – including those grown on recently deforested land”, the group claimed.
As a result, chocolate brands “cannot guarantee that their so-called sustainable cocoa isn’t sourced from plots carved out of Liberia’s rainforest”, it added.
On the ground, investigators found that cocoa exporters relied heavily on rural traders across Liberia’s ‘cocoa belt’ – “who buy indiscriminately from smallholders responding to the local cocoa boom”.
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“This creates a high-risk environment in which deforestation-linked beans are likely entering the supply chains of major European distributors, despite their products being certified as sustainable,” it warned.
As one of the world’s poorest countries, cocoa was a crucial cash crop for Liberian farmers seeking to escape poverty, the investigation pointed out.
“Many smallholder farmers still rely on slash-and-burn forest clearance to expand their plots,” it added. Soaring cocoa prices – driven in part by crop failures in neighbouring producer countries – had “fuelled a surge in Liberia’s cocoa exports and a rapid expansion of new farms”.
‘Cocoa belt’ deforestation
From 2021 to 2024, Liberia’s ‘cocoa belt’ counties lost more than 250,000 hectares of forest – an area larger than Luxembourg – as cocoa exports to Europe sharply increased, the report claimed.
Liberia contains the largest remaining stretch of the Upper Guinean Rainforest, a carbon-rich ecosystem spanning from Ghana to Sierra Leone. Its forests store carbon equivalent to Japan’s annual CO2 emissions and were home to endangered species such as chimpanzees and forest elephants, said Global Witness.
Interviews with Liberian cocoa exporters also revealed that access to the EU market was “a key motivator” for the country’s cocoa sector to embrace traceability and map supply chains, it added. However, exporters reported receiving “little support from EU traders and confectioners to achieve this”.
“Big brands are buying untraceable bulk cocoa that hides a massive deforestation footprint,” said Global Witness investigator Charlie Hammans.
“In the race for profit, they’ve cut corners on traceability – the same shortcuts that wiped out forests in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana and triggered crop failures there. Now the same cycle is repeating in Liberia. We cannot let it happen again.”
The delayed EU Deforestation regulation – which will come into force at the end of the year (albeit in watered-down form) – was “our best hope for standardising traceability and ensuring no products in European supermarkets are sourced from rainforest destruction”, Hammans said.
In response, a Rainforest Alliance spokesperson said the organisation encouraged cocoa companies “to use a segregated sourcing model because the certified ingredients are kept separate from non-certified ingredients”.
At the same time, “without mass balance, many smallholder farmers producing certified cocoa would lose access to global markets and investment in sustainable farming and forest protection”, it suggested. It pointed out RFA did not currently certify any cocoa farms in Liberia.
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“Our certification programme includes strong measures against deforestation, EUDR compliance support, and ongoing improvements in traceability, farm mapping, and assurance systems,” the RFA spokesperson added.
“Certification alone cannot solve systemic issues without shared responsibility and investment. We believe sector-wide change requires collective action from brands, traders, and governments, and we remain committed working with partners to achieve a deforestation-free cocoa sector.”
A Nestlé spokesperson said the food giant “do not operate in, nor source cocoa directly from, Liberia”.
“Traceability is a priority for us, and we are continuously strengthening it. All cocoa beans we source directly come through the Nestlé Cocoa Plan or our Income Accelerator Program,” they added.
“We are also working closely with our suppliers to achieve full first-mile traceability for beans processed into cocoa ingredients.”
Today, all Kit Kats produced in Nestlé’s Hamburg, Sofia, and York factories in Europe used cocoa mass-sourced directly from families engaged in the Income Accelerator Program under a mixed identity preserved model, the spokesperson said.
“This means that certified cocoa is physically separated from conventional cocoa, which helps maintain transparency throughout our supply chain.”
All other brands were approached for comment.
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