Trading Sweet Hearts

by Sharon McIver // September 21 2009

For some time now I’ve had a badly kept secret of the darkest and guiltiest variety – slave trade chocolate. Switching to Fairtrade coffee was easy because most of the locally owned roasters source beans from New Zealand charitable organisation Trade Aid. Chocolate however, is something I eat a lot of, so switching to Fairtrade has been one of my greatest ethical struggles.

In the past, I’ve had no trouble dumping brands that failed to meet my expectations. The first was Nestles (Nestlé if you’re posh), which I gave up when I found out about the ongoing international boycott of Nestlé products because of the company’s promotion of infant formula in developing countries. Cadbury got the boot when I discovered that it was not GE Free, and milk varieties were slowly replaced with dark for ‘health’ reasons and the environmental benefits of spurning anything supporting the dairy industry. Whittaker’s got stood up whenever Richfields’ Manuka Honey was on special, but I’d yet to find a 200g pack of Fairtrade that you could take home for a fiver.

I reasoned that this was a sustainability sin I could live with – who wants to be the green equivalent of a fundamentalist anyway?

And then I got hit with a plague of signs plainly suggesting that any sweet dark thing not wearing a black and white Slave Free Chocolate logo just had to go. The first was an interview with Dr. Julie Cupples who has researched extensively in Nicaragua (sustain.canterbury.ac.nz/people/profiles/index.shtml). We were talking about Fairtrade coffee, but she put it into context:

“Those who sell to the Fairtrade market, their kids go to school; they’ve got clothes, shoes, and food on the table…. So for me it’s like you can buy the coffee of life, the coffee that gives life, or you can buy the coffee of death, the coffee that causes malnutrition, starvation.”

“Which is also what my non-Fairtrade chocolate is doing,” I thought guiltily.

Within days, one of the other participants in a Sustainable Living Course I’m attending looked incredulous when I admitted I didn’t buy Fairtrade and lay down the challenge to switch. Still, I wasn’t quite ready to give up my Richfields’ Raspberry and Manuka Honey, and that week I indulged in both.

Then came ‘Palmgate’ with Cadbury being taken to task by Whittaker’s in a series of TV adverts for their use of palm oil, a product that is raising global concern over the destruction of rainforests for palm plantations, and the associated loss of habitat for orangutans. I bet the corporate ass who came up with that advertising campaign for Cadbury a couple of years back using a drumming gorilla (another ‘Critically endangered’ ape threatened with loss of habitat) was beginning to wish he’d chosen a less environmentally threatened animal. Perhaps a nice safe bunny, for instance – a creature with a long history of chocolification.

When anti-palm oil protestors fronted up to Cadbury’s annual jaffa roll down Dunedin’s Baldwin Street in July, the Dunedin based company was unapologetic about the decision. Interviewed on Campbell Live (July 17), Cadbury New Zealand Managing Director Matthew Oldham said: “Some people are going to be upset, but other people will embrace that change. I think there is a vocal minority who have made a lot of noise around the issue, but in terms of sales they are going well and we haven’t seen any impact.” (3news.co.nz/Cadburys-move-to-palm-oil-shows-little-impact-on-sales)

Having switched to fruit and nut varieties of dark chocolate some time ago, I find that Cadbury’s gooey concoctions taste faintly of chemicals. The thought of it with palm oil makes me cringe – it’s like seeing your first love twenty years later and discovering he drives a Porsche and has had hair plugs and botox. Urrrggghhhh.

A hail of emails and a drought in sales later, Cadbury admitted that the “vocal minority” had gone forth and multiplied. A month to the day from the July 17 proclamation that it would not cave to pressure to remove palm oil from their products, Cadbury announced that it was going to remove palm oil from their products. “We got it wrong,” admitted Mr Oldham (3news.co.nz/Cadbury-cave-to-consumer-pressure).

I watched the television item closely, and good on Cadbury for fronting up and accepting culpability. What was intriguing was that there was no mention of Fairtrade. Again, people had rallied to the support of animals, but were happy to ignore the human exploitation – as was I.

The next time I bought chocolate, there was a small range (i.e. two) of Scarborough Fair, hidden in the lower reaches of the chocolate racks. It was dark, 200g, and under five bucks, which made it very, very appealing.

I’ve probably scoffed a kilo of the stuff over the last few weeks – there’s nothing like researching chocolate to turn you into a craven chocoholic. At 70% cocoa it is rich and smooth – and the small squares make it the same size as the home made scroggin I like to pretend makes it a ‘healthy snack’. According to the wrappers, the Dark variety has ‘99% Fair Trade ingredients’, and the Fruit and Nut, ‘79%’ – so I’ll assume that doesn’t mean that the nuts and fruit are harvested by whip-scarred children working for a bowl of bananas a day.

I’d just started getting to know Scarborough Fair when Trade Aid joined the New Zealand chocolate wars with their salvo at Whittaker’s who had so smugly profited from the palm oil debacle. Geoff White, Trade Aid GM, asked the question they are putting to all chocolate makers: “Can you put a slave-free label on it? Yes or no – no ifs, buts or maybes.” Before the interview Mark Sainsbury introduced a clip that included footage of children going barefoot into the cocoa plantations and being whipped. No matter how often he mentioned Whittaker’s being fully supportive of the World Cocoa Foundation and the International Cocoa Initiative, Marketing Manager Philip Poole could not compete with images of badly scarred children. Whittaker’s had been given a king size taste of their own bittersweet. If I needed a sign that I’d made the right decision to switch to Fairtrade, I’d found it. This was evidence of an illegal slave trade operating to feed my desire.

To celebrate I sent Dear John letters to Whittaker’s and Richfield’s, the only brands I’ve bought in the past few years:

“I used to buy at least one or two large blocks of your chocolate a week, but I will not be supporting your brand again because I am no longer comfortable with buying chocolate that does not support fair trade cocoa bean production. As part of this process, I am writing an article for the University of Canterbury student magazine about my decision to change my consumer habits. Can you please tell me what your current policy is on this issue?

Kind regards
Dr. Sharon McIver”

[I’ve been waiting seven years to hassle corporations using the spoils of my fifty thou student loan – it has to be good for something.]

Richfields is yet to write back, but Whittaker’s has taken some time out before quietly acknowledging their part in our break-up. Here are the highlights:

“Dear Sharon

Whittaker’s source all of the cocoa beans that we use from Ghana and not from the Ivory Coast. We purchase the beans through the Ghanaian Cocoa Board which is the government marketing organization.

In a Labour study conducted into the Ghana Cocoa Industry in 2007, no evidence was found of child trafficking or children being bound on cocoa farms to the detriment of their education.

We do not believe, therefore, that the cocoa beans that we purchase from Ghana involve child slave labour.

We do not condone any abusive child labour or forced labour activities in the production of cocoa beans. We are members of the Confectionery Manufacturers of Australasia and the World Cocoa Foundation. We fully support the programmes that these organizations . . . are conduction [sic] in West Africa to end any abusive labour practices.

Kind regards
J.H Whittaker & Sons Limited”

For a moment there I thought that J.H. Whittaker himself had responded, but beneath this was signed Philip Poole. Sigh.

Although the letter was not written by a spirit chocolateer, it has done something to assuage my guilt. At least the hundreds of bars of Whittaker’s I’ve gobbled over the years were probably not produced by children being abused. Of course, it’s a bit like finding out that your beloved only has one mistress when you’d heard there were several. He’s not saying that there are no children involved, just that they are not abused or denied schooling.

The Trade Aid website sweetjustice.org.nz confirms my suspicions. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), West Africa supplies nearly 80% of the world’s cocoa and 46% comes from the Ivory Coast where a 2005 ILO study found “over 150,000 children working under the worst forms of child labour in the cocoa industry”.

The website also notes that whilst many New Zealand chocolate companies claim that cocoa plantations in Ghana are free from child slavery, that because of the competition, “farmers in Ghana are also using slave labour to survive.” In 2009, International Police Organisation, Interpol “estimated hundreds of thousands of children were working illegally in plantations across Ivory Coast and Ghana.” In June, they rescued 54 child slaves from the Ivory Coast, and are currently planning a further operation to rescue child slaves from cocoa plantations in Ghana. (sweetjustice.org.nz)

Being Fairtrade certified is about a lot more than simply ensuring that children are not mistreated. On the Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO) site (fairtrade.net) is listed the standards required for cocoa producers wishing to be labelled with the blue and gold Fairtrade Mark.

Producers should be “small family farms organized in cooperatives or associations which they own and govern” and there should be “no forced labour of any kind, including child labour.” A Fairtrade minimum price is paid directly to the producer organisations, and when the world market price rises above the Fairtrade minimum, the market price is paid. In all cases, a Fairtrade Premium is paid on top of the purchase price for social and economic investments in the area. If the cocoa beans are organic they earn a higher minimum price and Premium. In addition, FLO have environmental standards which restrict the use of agrochemicals and encourage sustainability.

You may be wondering what happens when a product is made up of several ingredients – does the Fairtrade Mark ensure that all of that product is 100% Fairtrade?

Um, no. The Composite Products tab clearly states: “product can carry the FAIRTRADE Mark even when not all of the ingredients are Fairtrade.” However, “all ingredients for which there are Fairtrade standards must be Fairtrade certified… On such products a statement appears on the packaging to clearly highlight which specific ingredient/s are certified.”
There is also a Minimum Fairtrade Content requirement and in order to display the Fairtrade Mark “50% of the volume of liquid composite products must be Fairtrade certified. For all other composite products the significant ingredient (for example cocoa in chocolate) must be Fairtrade certified, and must be at least 20% of the products’ dry weight.” (fairtrade.net/composite_products)

Well, at least they’re clear about their expectations. Of course, brands like Whittaker’s may be forced to switch to Fairtrade if they intend to stay competitive with Cadbury, who in the days after Palmgate announced that from Easter 2010, the Dairy Milk brand would be sold under the Fairtrade logo in Australia and New Zealand. The move was in line with the excellent announcement by Cadbury in March that from September 2009, all Dairy Milk produced in Britain would be Fairtrade, a decision which has doubled the market for Fairtrade cocoa.

Barely a week had passed since Cadbury New Zealand’s announcement however, when Cadbury, the UK parent company, received an unsolicited takeover bid from American conglomerate Kraft for £10.2 billion. Cadbury – which is planning to close its Somerdale factory near Bristol and make 500 workers redundant next year – has declined.

I break off another chunk of Scarborough Fair Fruit and Nut and check out The Guardian’s message board about the takeover bid. (guardian.co.uk/business/2009/sep/07/cadbury-kraft-takeover-offer) Mostly there is relief that Cadbury has presented a stiff upper lip and that the company responsible for plastic cheese will not get its sticky Yankee paws on their chocolate. There are also a couple of digs at Cadbury for making “crap” chocolate and for having sold out their Quaker roots long ago.

Thirty five comments in I find a reference to Fairtrade, but the posts that follow tend to ignore it, apart from one that notes that if Kraft do buy Cadbury, the decision to make Dairy Milk Fairtrade will most likely be axed. Another also notes that Cadbury subsidiary Green & Black – which is both Fairtrade and Certified Organic – is also at risk if Kraft succeeds in its bid.

In the midst of the comments, one stands out: “British chocolate for British workers.”

Since when has Britain produced cocoa beans?

Native to South America, the cacao tree was worshipped by the Maya who believed it to be of divine origin – cacao meaning ‘God Food’. The beans were roasted, pounded, fermented, and finally brewed into a spicy, bittersweet drink. Even then, cacao was a status symbol, and only the wealthy and the religious elite got to sample it.

The Aztec elite also liked the taste of cacao, but because it didn’t grow so well in central Mexico, the beans were acquired through trade and war, and were used as currency (there goes the savings account), and 100 beans would buy you a slave. Considered an aphrodisiac, wealthy Aztecs also got their cacao hit as a beverage called Xocolatl, which was rendered ‘chocolat’ by the Spanish conquistadors.

The legend goes that Xocolatl was so valued that when Montezuma was defeated by Cortez in 1519, they found mountains of cocoa beans where they were expecting to find precious metals. Smart thinking – if you were starving, which would you prefer: a cup of cocoa, or a plate of gold?

Cortez took the treasure back to Europe with him, but already the original drink had been bastardised with sugar and vanilla. The Spanish were the first to taste this wonder of the New World (not to be confused with the supermarket chain), and by the early 17th century, chocolate powder was being exported to other parts of Europe.

England first tasted cocoa in the early sixteenth century, but the first English chocolate house did not open until mid 1600’s. Along with opium, sugar, tea, and coffee, cocoa was one of the spoils of colonisation that quickly became embedded in English culture; addictives that resulted in the Atlantic slave trade, of which Britain was one of the most exploitive nations.

Now most of the cocoa comes from Africa, Central and South America, and – closer to home – Indonesia, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea. (internationalcocoaorganisation.net/questions/production.htm) In the days of the British Empire, chocolate may have been technically British, but then, as now, the chocolate makers were reliant on the exploitation of non-white workers for white profit and enjoyment.

But back to the Guardian message board. Finally someone suggests that Africans should “stop selling cocoa to these feckers and start producing chocolate for export instead.”

A few messages later a representative from the Grenada Chocolate Company points out that someone has done just that – only it’s in the Caribbean – and posts a link to Radical Chocolate, a short film about a cooperative of farmers and chocolate makers who grow, ferment, and process cocoa beans into Fairtrade Certified Organic chocolate. I click the link and am greeted to a burst of old school reggae sound-tracking the footage of lush green cocoa plantations. Have I found chocolate nirvana?

The Grenada Chocolate Company Ltd. is an innovation by Mott Green who saw the value in making chocolate on location in the cocoa plantations and founded the company in 1999 “with the idea of creating an Organic Cocoa Farmers’ and Chocolate-Makers’ Cooperative” (grenadachocolate.com). Nestled amongst the cocoa groves in Grenada’s rainforest, the factory produces award winning organic dark chocolate.

The wooden, pastel coloured factory is solar powered, and because small batch chocolate making is now rare, by necessity much of the equipment is second-hand. By creating their own processing methods, the Cooperative use refurbished antiques alongside new machines based on the design of those used in the early 1900’s, “when quality had precedence over quantity in chocolate-making.”

The Company sources the cocoa beans and cocoa butter from the 150 organic cocoa farms in the Cooperative and ferments it a mile from the factory. The cocoa is grown without the use of any chemical pesticides, herbicides or fertilisers, and the chocolate is made with organic raw sugar produced and milled by an organic growers’ cooperative in Paraguay, along with a dash of whole organic vanilla grown biodynamically in Costa Rica, and “extremely small amounts” of organic soy lecithin as emulsifier (grenadachocolate.com/about).

Sheeesssh… talk about food of the gods. I want some!

As luck would have it, 85g bars of The Grenada Chocolate Company Certified Organic Fairtrade chocolate can be bought for a fiver. Unfortunately, that’s five quid. Resigned to it being currently wholly unavailable, I window shop. Were I one of the world’s wealthy elite I could indulge my craving with boxes of lovingly handcrafted morsels, or even a hand-painted chocolate pig.

Because chocolate made using sustainable and fair trading practices costs more to produce, only those who can afford it can buy such a ‘divinely’ made product naturally grown and processed within reach of the gods who invented the sacred food in the first place. The reason there is a chocolate slave trade is because those of us who can’t afford (or won’t pay) the real cost have decided that chocolate is too important to give up. Maybe one day, we’ll all be able to get a taste of such fair made chocolate as that produced by The Grenada Chocolate Company. Until then, I’m comforted to know that by buying Fairtrade, there’s a watchdog ensuring that no humans are harmed in the making of my favourite sweet, dark, and readily available date.

Go to sweetjustice.org.nz/news/2009/take-action for a list of New Zealand chocolate companies and ask your chocolate maker whether they can guarantee that their products do not involve slave labour. Make the switch and celebrate the taste of slave free chocolate.

sustain.canterbury.ac.nz
ucsa.org.nz/clubs/poverty-and-fair-trade-club/