After a lengthy discussion and the discovery that the cacao nibs I bought are fair trade, we decided to throw the remainder of the chocolate and cocoa away. It’s true that we have already paid the various growers and middlemen who’ve profited from the slavery of children and therefore we can’t escape culpability, but we decided that we couldn’t enjoy the benefits of the slavery in good conscience.
Cacao pod picker courtesy of The Dark Side of Chocolate
We ended up throwing away 5 boxes of Baker’s Chocolate (a Kraft Product and not fair trade), 6 bags of Enjoy Life Mega Chunks and Mini-Chips and a container of Hershey’s cocoa powder (not fair trade). Enjoy Life is not fair trade either and issued the following statement on the issue:
“While our chocolate is not fair-trade certified due to strict allergen requirements, our supplier focuses on improving conditions for the cocoa farmers and is committed to operating in an ethical, responsible and safe manner.”
Since there are several other vegan and allergen free chocolate products on the market at least one of which is fair trade (see Mama Ganash) why can’t this be true of other chocolate companies as well?
The reason we decided that we couldn’t benefit from the chocolate we’d already purchased, is that knowing the situation now, there is no way that we could enjoy that benefit. I would always be thinking about the children enslaved as cacao growers, used, manipulated and beaten so that I could have a chocolate chip smoothie and Walt could have my chocolate orange cake. There is no way we can not know this now that we know it and therefore there is no way we could actually eat the products of slavery.
Mea Culpa – This brought me to the fact that last year I had come across Enjoy Life Products in Target and was so excited that they were vegan that I wrote several articles extolling their merits and recommending that vegans use this brand of chocolate chips and chunks in their cooking. I am very sorry I did that and see no way to correct that mistake other than to ask my followers not to buy any chocolate that isn’t fair trade, including Enjoy Life. And say I’m sorry. Especially to the children. It most definitely won’t happen again.
And I will also say that the chocolate industry hasn’t heard the last of this.
For more information on Fair Trade, visit the Fair Trade USA website: http://www.fairtradeusa.org/
I understand your reasons for not wanting to eat the chocolate. But was throwing it away the only option? It was already paid for so the evil was done. It seems to me that you could have given it to someone who didn’t share your concerns. That way the labor of the child doesn’t go to waste. When I divested myself of leather, down, etc., I gave it away. I felt that the poor animals’ lives, though cruelly taken from them, didn’t go in vain. Perhaps I could be persuaded otherwise by reasonable arguments, however.
We felt that even if we gave it to other people, then someone would be benefiting from the slavery and worse, we would have been the ones funding their enjoyment. And we couldn’t do that. For us, it would be a little too much like hosting a ball at a Plantation. So we chose to throw it away. A smaller part of that decision, at least for me, was symbolic. i felt like seeing it in the garbage would remind me that it wasn’t something that I wanted to eat ever again. I also thought that the picture in my head of it being in the garbage would help me to remember not to buy it out of habit in the future. It turned out not to be such a hard decision after all.
I see your point Karen. I understand vegan farm girl’s decision. When I went vegan I didn’t give that last block of cheese or carton of eggs to an omnivore friend. It sounds silly, but why would I want someone else to eat cruelty and oppression
great post! Veganism is a compassionate lifestyle and that compassion shouldn’t exclude humans.
Thank you!