program – conducted by Nestlé through the International Cocoa Initiative with 26,000 farmers mostly located in Côte d'Ivoire – observed a 51% decrease in the number of children doing hazardous jobs in cocoa farming. A separate sub-study conducted by NORC and commissioned by the World Cocoa Foundation in 2019, provides detailed results which demonstrate that hazardous child labour has been reduced by one-third in communities where company programs are in place. The US Department of Labor formed the Child Labor Cocoa Coordinating Group as a public-private partnership with the governments of Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire to address child labour practices in the cocoa industry. The International Cocoa Initiative involving major cocoa manufacturers established the Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation System intended to monitor thousands of farms in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire for child labour conditions. Despite these efforts, goals to reduce child labour in West Africa by 70% before 2020 are slowed by persistent poverty, absence of schools, expansion of cocoa farmland, and increased demand for coco. In April 2018, the Cocoa Barometer 2018 report on the $100-billion industry, said this about the child labour situation: "Not a single company or government is anywhere near reaching the sectorwide objective of the elimination of child labour, and not even near their commitments of a 70% reduction of child labour by 2020". A report later that year by New Food Economy stated that the Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems implemented by the International Cocoa Initiative and its partners has been useful, but "they are currently reaching less than 20 percent of the over two million children impacted". According to the 2018 edition of the Cocoa Barometer, a biennial report examining the economics of cocoa that's published by a consortium of nonprofits, the current farmer income is $.78. Class action lawsuits in the US against companies in the cocoa industry have not achieved much success. In 2015, lawsuits against Mars, Nestlé, and Hershey's alleged that their products' packaging failed to disclose that production may involve child slave labour. All were dismissed in 2016, although the plaintiffs filed an appeal. Nestlé's website, as paraphrased by Mother Jones magazine, states: The company said it had spent $5.5 million on the problem in 2016. Note too that Nestlé had published a report in 2017 on child labour in the cocoa supply chain, Tackling Child Labour, with additional specifics as to their "approach to addressing this