WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- A labor-rights group is threatening legal action to require the U.S. government to consider banning cocoa imports from Ivory Coast, alleging that forced child labor is employed extensively in production.

In a letter to U.S. Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner on Thursday, the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) demanded an official investigation and enforcement action under the 1997 Sanders Amendment to the U.S. Trade Act of 1930, a law which prohibits U.S. imports of products created with "forced or indentured child labor."

"There is with existing evidence an ample basis for barring the entry of all cocoa from Ivory Coast because of the pervasive use of prohibited forms of child labor in the harvesting of cocoa beans," ILRF said. The U.S. Customs Service had no immediate comment on the issue.

ILRF cited reports by the U.N., the International Labor Organization, and the U.S. State Department documenting child trafficking from neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso into Ivory Coast for the purpose of providing cheap indentured child workers for the labor-intensive cocoa harvest. Last month ILRF sent its own economist, Marx-Vilaire Aristide, to Ivory Coast for a two-week investigation.

"Child slaves are used on cocoa plantations all over (Ivory Coast) without any observable programs to stop the practice," Aristide said. After talking with cocoa farmers to get an idea of their demand for labor and what type they expect to employ, he said he found that farmers are pressed to cut labor costs to maintain income as cocoa prices have plummeted. Aristide suggested that one simple solution could be for the large multinational cocoa processors to offer to pay more for cocoa beans produced on farms certified free of indentured child labor.

The chocolate industry says it is trying to fight the problem. Cocoa users around the world have joined with labor-rights groups in a formal agreement to seek to end bonded child labor. The industry is working with the Ivorian government and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to set up programs for testing different solutions throughout West Africa during the harvest this September.

"This petition is really counterproductive," said Larry Graham, president of the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, an organization which represents U.S. chocolate manufacturers and distributors. "There are 600,000 family farms in the Ivory Coast alone, and there is no evidence from anyone that (forced child labor) is going on in the vast majority of them."

Graham said that most of the cocoa farms are between five and 10 acres in size, and that hired labor generally works alongside the farmers and their families. He disagreed that lower cocoa prices are driving the use of child labor, arguing that, "the few farmers out there that are abusing their workers will do so if the price is high or if the price is low."

Ivory Coast's government has tightened its borders and has imprisoned some child labor brokers, Graham said.

Aristide said farmers he interviewed had heard nothing from the companies which buy cocoa about programs to end forced child labor.

Dissatisfaction with the pace at which industry is moving is why ILRF decided to petition U.S. Customs, said ILRF Deputy Director Bama Athreya. "Whatever the Chocolate Manufacturers claim to be doing about this, we cannot leave a problem as serious as child slavery to voluntary private efforts, particularly when there is a federal law on the books to combat it."

Athreya said just 10 companies, handle 90% of the cocoa business in Ivory Coast. Because Nestle (Z.NES), Cargill (X.CAG) and Archer Daniels Midland have processing plants in the country, they are allowed to buy directly from the farmers. Therefore, a system of spot inspections to ensure those companies are refusing to buy cocoa produced through bonded child labor "would have a significant effect on the entire industry," she said.

By Elizabeth Price, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9295; elizabeth.price@ dowjones.com (http://dowjones.com)