Fair Trade chocolate is being sold by the nonprofit
Global Exchange as part of its "Reverse Trick-or-
Treat" program. Photo by Susie Norris
Despite the abundance of Almond Joys, the pure joy of candy bar season is harder to find. The chocolate industry is blighted with the stubborn reality of child slavery and human trafficking. The U.S. State Department estimates that more than 109,000 children in the Ivory Coast's cocoa industry work under "the worst forms of child labor," and that some 10,000 are victims of human trafficking or enslavement.
During the six years I spent researching my book "Chocolate Bliss," I visited cacao plantations (cacao is the source tree for chocolate, which is made from the seeds of its fruit pods) and saw the difficulty farmers face. They coaxed pods off the trees with calloused hands, then lugged the harvested pods to primitive piles and opened them, one by one, with machetes. They sprayed the disease-prone trees with powerful pesticides. Some of these workers were only 10 years old and many lived in unspeakable poverty. "Poverty is the root cause of the worst forms of child labor," says Jan Vingerhoets, executive director of the International Cocoa Organization.
While some continue to dispute the reports of child slavery in the chocolate industry, I've come to see the wisdom of Fair Trade certification, which guarantees farmers a minimum price for their crops despite market fluctuations, and finances local community improvements.
Fair Trade certification and sustainable farming initiatives exist only on the fringes of the chocolate business. They certainly don't reach the corporate machines of Big Chocolate -- Hershey's, Nestle, Mars. According to Adrienne Fitch-Frankel of the San Fracisco-based nonprofit Global Exchange, only 1 percent of the world’s chocolate is certified Fair Trade. Cadbury is the first large company to sign on to produce a major product line (its Dairy Milk Bar) using only Fair Trade cocoa beans, but the future and the scope of their plans are tenuous.
My Halloween treat this year was to learn about Global Exchange's Reverse Trick or Treat program. When you or your child collects nuggets of Big Chocolate from the neighbors' candy bowl, you return the favor by giving them a small piece of Fair Trade dark chocolate and a flyer explaining the need to support sustainable farming and human rights in the chocolate industry. Reverse Trick or Treat expects to reach 250,000 households with its army of trick or treating, socially-conscious school children.
So, how does this Fair Trade chocolate taste? Dark, earthy, a little sweet and a lot less bitter.
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