Chocolate Rabbit Dilemma in the Inferiority Complex! (feel free to laugh, please)

[motherinferior]

To nobody's great surprise, I have liberalpinko Issues about Chocolate ? production of, not consumption. And therefore ordered a bunch of Divine choc eggs and mini eggs, which have arrived.

Ah, but now I see that Mr Inferior has put some G&B eggs ? which are NOT fairly traded although more ethically produced than others, I think on our Ocado order (not yet processed); plus, crucially, a couple of Lindt chocolate rabbits.

While Abel & Cole, our rightonliberalpinko organic delivery lot, is doing mini chocolate rabbits from the Chocolate Alchemist, which are I think produced with some degree of fairness. Although not FT logoed. Also no bell round neck.

So, do I interfere with Mr Inferior's parenting/consumer rights by cancelling his rabbits in the interests of World Fairness and Equity?

(Feel free to snigger. I am, dammit.)

Ditch the bunnies.

Tell MrInferior they have the taint of capitalist myxomatosis and buy him a copy of Watership Down, ignoring his "Elmer Farking Fudd!" taunts.

Buy the free range right on chocolate eggs.

Have children decorate them with icing bunnies.

Help children eat eggs.

Bell around neck is sinister Pavlovian marketing tool.

(all M&S coffee is FairTrade, I think)

Find some moulds and make your own bunnies with Divine.
This is what I do...and the kids can join in too

Delete Offensive Bunnies from Ocado order and tell him there must have been a cock up with said order - you will follow it up with them, and get other bunnies (of more ethical persuasion) in the interim. My DH Does Not Understand online ordering/deliveries and will quite happily accept any excuse I come up with. As long as the alcohol arrives he is quite happy.

We still have a Lindt Santa here which DD1 can't quite bring herself to eat. She felt the same way about a chocolate cat a few years ago, but DD2, who has no scruples, ethical or otherwise, bit its head off and left decapitated body in DD1's room for her to find .

Have sent him email suggesting replacement. If not will augment in any case, as am now quite yearning for chocolate rabbits myself.

did buy organic choc lollipops from M&S

again not sure if manufactured by People Under Duress

It's a minefield, a liberalpinko conscience, I tell you.

Chocolate shouldn't be a minefield. It's a relatively easy one. You can easily buy it fair trade, some of the fair trade stuff is lovely. No real problem.

not like, say, having to work out the environmental impact of putting in a new woodburning stove (where will the wood come from?) compared to using gas central heating. etc. or the biofuels issue. Chocolate is simple.

chocolate does seem to be a particular flashpoint though

have been buying organic fairtrade cotton t shirts of late, but more accidentally than deliberately

did you hear the food prog on choc? think it was last week...re: AGMs they have in africa. sounds a hoot!

The problem as I see it is with how much to intervene in MrInferior's consumer choices, not with chocolate.

ah, well I have a different problem.

Someone else's Lindt bunny (packaged with chocolate blocks) was delivered in my Ocado shopping. And I didn't notice until DS (3) gleefully pulled it from the shopping bag. It is now on top of our fridge looking - well - large. And out of place.

I don't even like chocolate. DH is eyeing it up but hasn't been brave enough to ask whose it is yet.

I think I might give it to the milkman, since I forgot to give him a Xmas present (to be fair I was in Australia).

Yes, and how far those choices are to be interpreted as parenting ones, bearing in mind Bink's important proviso.

Does it have a bell, LA? A bell lends charm.

MI, launch your defence of Fairtrade in the style of Liberty Leading The People and he'll be more than reasonable.

(Bootcamp has noticed your absence btw...)

I don't think so. It is however multi-jurisdictional, it would seem, hailing from both Germany and France.

let it go I think......

Message withdrawn

Fennel - you say chocolate is simple? Pah!

what about the environmental costs of transport and delivery, as against the opportunity for earning a decent income for chocolate producers?

the perennial organic vs fairtrade debate (clearly to my mind resolved in favour of fairtrade, but not so simple a decision)

the very fact of purchasing chocolate as a response to Easter or Eostra (sp?), replacing spiritual values and the celebration of resurgent Life with a mere consumerist act?

OTOH what about the feasting element of Eostre celebrations, which chocolate clearly embodies, eh? Also the necessary function of excess-as-celebration, too?

I'm profoundly anxious about the use of ompa lumpas in the chocolate production process. They were ripped wholesale from their own culture to assist in Western imperatives (much like the Ghurkas).

And while Willy Wonka claims to be 'protecting' them from great hardship in their own land I feel sure that this objective would have been better achieved by establishing them in chocolate production social enterprises in their country, supprted by low-interest loans and the Fair Trade brand.

The oompa loompas are an apalling example of indentured labour.

And do the the nut-cracking squrrels live under Freedom Food conditions??

yes, yes indeed
(strokes chin and wrings hands simultaneously)

those are relatively minor ethical choices though, you can get fair trade organic chocolate. (can't you? I don't buy much chocolate lately so I'm a bit out of touch).

Also in my house and for my siblings too the buying of easter choc bunnies and eggs is a symbolic act of resistance to hardline christian upbringing where those things were not permitted as "Not being what easter is about". so I now feel a moral duty to indulge in pagan chocolate rituals.

though this is off the point of the thread probably.

Fennel at your dp buying cadbury eggs! His taste buds must be - shivers - warped...

Well, dilemma as presented here is solved by cheery email from DP agreeing to my suggestion to scrap Rabbits of Oppression for Rabbits of Freedom