Back in March, Cadbury announced it’ll make Cadbury Dairy Milk bars with fair trade chocolate — for chocoholics in Ireland and the U.K. Now, Cadbury’s expanding its fair trade commitment! Come early 2010, Cadbury Dairy Milk bars in Canada, New Zealand and Australia will all be fair trade certified.
Cadbury’s move’s expected to quadruple Ghana’s fair trade cocoa sales. Of course, if you live in the U.S., you may be wondering why Cadbury bars here aren’t going to be getting the fair trade certification mark. The reason: Hersheys. Explains the Labor Rights Forum blog: “In the US, Hershey owns the license to produce most Cadbury chocolate here and unlike many companies, Hershey has not committed to any certification programs to improve working conditions for cocoa farmers.”
To put the pressure on Hershey’s, ILF has a list of 6 actions you can take, ranging from leaving a comment on a blog post to signing up for Reverse Trick-or-Treating this Halloween. But the action that’ll have the most impact, in my view, is simply not buying non-fair trade chocolate. After all, even in the U.S., we’ve got plenty of tasty fair trade chocolate options available, from Equal Exchange to Theo!
Earlier: Change your choco habit, change the world (a little)
Photo via Cadbury
I am so glad that you have made me aware of this–I have a chocolate section on my blog site and I will try to get this linked to my site because what you have to say is so important!
Comment by kaydee — August 27, 2009 @ 8:10 am
Thanks for the props :) Enjoy organic, fair trade chocolate –
Comment by Siel — September 2, 2009 @ 5:33 pm