Fair Trade & Chocolate
I don't need to draw this topic out. Once you know the issue here, you kind of have to look at chocolate differently. Because the one ingredient you won't see on any chocolate label is an ingredient found in most: slave sweat.
Maybe not physical sweat in the chocolate. But you know what I mean. MOST of the chocolate grown in the world is grown with slave labor. The Ivory Coast is especially infamous for this practice, and ALL of the big chocolate makers use this chocolate, as well as anyone getting their chocolate from the major providers.
Fair trade is a 3rd party certification that verifies slaves are NOT used in growing cacao, and that farmers are paid more fairly for their labor. The extra that they're paid actually isn't a lot, and some small chocolate companies will work directly with farmers -- bypassing buyers -- and pay them much better. Sometimes you'll even see this latter option labeled as "Direct Trade," which is best of all for the farmers.
Many companies offer some form of fair trade certification, and I'm not going to argue about the best certification out there. I just want to make it clear that slavery still exists in our world, and it's especially prevalent in the chocolate and coffee industries. If you think you would never own a slave or support slavery, now you know that you've probably been doing so by accident. And if you continue buying chocolate and coffee without some sort of fair trade assurance, you may still be contributing.
This may not be a verifiable health matter to you when choosing chocolate, but I personally feel that we're all connected and that slavery anywhere hurts people everywhere.
Now I won't get into the complexities of world economies, emerging markets, currencies, and all the other matters that have people underpaid, working in low-end conditions, and whether this is right or wrong. But we all have to draw a line somewhere, and I hope that people being abused and unpaid for their work is a line we'll choose to never consciously cross.
Maybe not physical sweat in the chocolate. But you know what I mean. MOST of the chocolate grown in the world is grown with slave labor. The Ivory Coast is especially infamous for this practice, and ALL of the big chocolate makers use this chocolate, as well as anyone getting their chocolate from the major providers.
Fair trade is a 3rd party certification that verifies slaves are NOT used in growing cacao, and that farmers are paid more fairly for their labor. The extra that they're paid actually isn't a lot, and some small chocolate companies will work directly with farmers -- bypassing buyers -- and pay them much better. Sometimes you'll even see this latter option labeled as "Direct Trade," which is best of all for the farmers.
Many companies offer some form of fair trade certification, and I'm not going to argue about the best certification out there. I just want to make it clear that slavery still exists in our world, and it's especially prevalent in the chocolate and coffee industries. If you think you would never own a slave or support slavery, now you know that you've probably been doing so by accident. And if you continue buying chocolate and coffee without some sort of fair trade assurance, you may still be contributing.
This may not be a verifiable health matter to you when choosing chocolate, but I personally feel that we're all connected and that slavery anywhere hurts people everywhere.
Now I won't get into the complexities of world economies, emerging markets, currencies, and all the other matters that have people underpaid, working in low-end conditions, and whether this is right or wrong. But we all have to draw a line somewhere, and I hope that people being abused and unpaid for their work is a line we'll choose to never consciously cross.
