Fair Trade Chocolate

I have been doing a lot of research to find out companies who make fair trade chocolate or companies who do not use chocolate harvested with child slaves. 75% of the world's chocolate comes from the West Coast of Africa especially the Ivory Coast and Ghana. Both of these countries are known to allow childhood slavery to harvest chocolate. Parents are told that their child will be given a good job where they can send money back home to help the desperately poor families. Once away from their families the children are forced to work long hours 12-14 hours days in very poor conditions. They are exposed to unhealthy doses of insecticides and pesticides. For this, they are not given any wages.

Some companies say they do not use slave chocolate as it is called because they do not buy chocolate from Africa but obtain all their chocolate from South and Central America. Lindt chocolate falls into this category. This chocolate is a little better but is usually made with workers who are not paid a living wage for their families. The only way to guarantee that your chocolate is made from harvests from fair trade farms. Several companies provide this chocolate.

Companies who have fair trade chocolate for sale are Equal Exchange, Whole Foods organic chocolate, Dagoba, Trader Joe's fair trade cocoa and organic chocolate bars, Green and Black's, Endangered Species, Clif bars and Newman's Own. Ben and Jerry's ice cream has some fair trade chocolate brands and is moving to having all of their chocolate come from fair trade sources. This is not an exhaustive list. If you google "slave free chocolate" you can find sights with a more extensive list. Any chocolate that carries the black and white Transfair logo can be guaranteed to be slave free and grown with sustainable measures.

Take some time today and look for some of these brands. They are a little more expensive then everyday chocolate but remember the cheapness of other brands pays a heavy cost in the loss of children's lives.