Before you buy chocolate this Valentine's…
I spent two hours listening to our six-year-old son read to me from the Better World Shopping Guide yesterday morning. Sounds weird, right? I know. But Simon has such an interest in finding out which companies we should support and which ones we should boycott. I couldn’t help but chuckle, but inside, my heart burned with passion – the same passion I saw in my son’s eyes. The start of a global awareness that in my opinion, should start at birth.
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I want to challenge the notion that chocolate = LOVE. |
It’s ironic and horrific that a ‘holiday’ supposed to be bent on LOVE is literally DIPPED in chocolate. The very industry that has meant torture, pain, and inequality for far too many of our world’s children. And this is love?
Others to stay away from – Hershey’s, Russell Stover, Lindt, Cadbury, Dove.
Daloa, Ivory Coast (CNN) – Chocolate’s billion-dollar industry starts with workers like Abdul. He squats with a gang of a dozen harvesters on an Ivory Coast farm.
Abdul holds the yellow cocoa pod lengthwise and gives it two quick cracks, snapping it open to reveal milky white cocoa beans. He dumps the beans on a growing pile.
Abdul is 10 years old, a three-year veteran of the job.
He has never tasted chocolate.
During the course of an investigation for CNN’s Freedom Project initiative – an investigation that went deep into the cocoa fields of Ivory Coast – a team of CNN journalists found that child labor, trafficking and slavery are rife in an industry that produces some of the world’s best-known brands.
It was not supposed to be this way.
After a series of news reports surfaced in 2001 about gross violations in the cocoa industry, lawmakers in the United States put immense pressure on the industry to change.
“We felt like the public ought to know about it, and we ought to take some action to try to stop it,” said Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who, together with Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, spearheaded the response. “How many people in America know that all this chocolate they are eating – candies and all of those wonderful chocolates – is being produced by terrible child labor?”
Links I found:
6 Comments
Jamie
I'm so glad to see I'm not the only person getting strange looks in grocery stores! Though I'm usually muttering in disgust over the chemical and neuro-toxin laden ingredient lists.
Thanks for this timely reminder – I'd heard about the perils of chocolate before but we eat so little around here (sugar intolerance) that I'd forgotten.
Just one more reason why we need to make conscious effort to disconnect our emotions and holidays from commercial consumerism!
Andy and Jodie Hartfield
I love this post! I've never been to your blog before but a friend posted this and I've been trying to raise awareness myself of this issue! I recently blogged about the issue at http://www.teamhartfield.com.
Meghan Carver
Wow! I had no idea — much to think about here. I'm sharing to Facebook so that my friends can think as well. Thanks.
Brittany @Clarke-Family.net
My step mother sent me this… http://slaveryfootprint.org/
Very interesting…and we love Come Together Trading…they've got great soaps from Ghana (in my opinion, soap is much more romantic than chocolate anyway…) 🙂
willowsprite
This breaks my heart. Thankyou for putting it out there. I don't think a lot of people really think about how the things they buy are produced.
Franny
Hope it's ok that I linked to your great post in my blog!