Chocolate Festival, Kiev, Ukraine

The chocolate industry is a steadily growing, $50 billion-a-year worldwide business centered on the sale and consumption of chocolate. This industry is prevalent on five out of seven continents. Big Chocolate, as it is also called, is essentially an oligopoly between major international chocolate companies in Europe and the U.S. These U.S. companies such as Mars and Hershey’s alone generate $13 billion a year in chocolate sales and account for two thirds of U.S. manufacturers. However, Europe accounts for 45% of the world's chocolate revenue.
For a discussion of child labor in the chocolate industry, see Children in cocoa production.