To ask you to eat lots of chocolate

[lastfirstkiss]

on the condition that it does not use cocoa beans harvested by children who have been trafficked?

Over 1.8 million children work in the Ivory Coast and Ghana cutting down cocoa beans and regularly injuring themselves with machetes. 400,000 of these children are under 12.

Stop the Traffik have a campaign for chocolate currently running and one of it's biggest aims is for people to stop buying chocolate which uses these horrific sources. Check out their website if you want to know more. I have watched lots of documentaries on this subject and been disgusted by what these kids go through.

The best part is that to help the cause they encourage fondue parties!

Which chocolate companies should we buying from then?

Yes let me know which chocolate we can eat.

Any which carry the Fairtrade logo or the Rainforest Alliance logo.

Cadbury's are pretty good, with all Dairy Milk varieties being Fairtrade. Pretty much every supermarket does a Fairtrade range as well.

It is a subject that i bring upon every porn thread, when exploitation is talked about, as this exploitation is overlooked, on MN and in RL.

I had to do a presentation in work, we had to pick any subject, just to keep our skills upto date. I picked Tea/Coffee/Chocolate and the difference Fair Trade and ethical standards make. I have changed my shopping habbits as a result of what i found out.

Apart from when Kraft shafted the workers at Bourneville.

Buying Fairtrade chocolate sadly doesn't guarantee it was made with Fairtrade cocoa beans.

It's a bit of a con really because the non Fairtrade beans are mixed with the Fairtrade...so despite the label you still have no idea how humanely the cocoa beans were produced.

But the more pressure placed on chocolate companies to change their standards the better. £600 billion was made by chocolate companies and only 0.0075% of that was used to improve working conditions in cocoa farms. These poor kids are trafficked from Burkina Faso to work with machetes for hours a day.

I know Mumsnet is a great forum for people to campaign and I am impressed with the effect you have on large companies. Just thought I would bring this issue up.

Oh I agree but more pressure needs to be put on those who classify the chocolate/cocoa beans as Fair trade.

It's just not right that you can buy a 'Fair trade' chocolate bar, thinking you're doing the right thing...only to find not a single bean was produced ethically.

Well actually you won't 'find' it because you just won't know.

You're very right Worra, it is worrying to find so much of our food is labelled incorrectly.

It is impossible.

There are a number of middle men between the growers and the end buyer. At any point it the chain the cocoa can be mixed.

There was a documentary a couple of years ago where the journalist bought a bag of cocoa beans from a farmer using child labour and sold it on as fair trade.

lastfirstkiss You're very right Worra, it is worrying to find so much of our food is labelled incorrectly.

It may even contain Dobbin!

Interesting article here - www.chocablog.com/features/how-fair-is-fairtrade-chocolate/ about fairtrade.