Is your chocolate slavery-free?

[reynardo]

Dammit, we no longer buy Nestle or Phillip-Morris chocolate. Now I find things are even worse. A friend has pointed me towards this article in Salon:


And I quote:

Suddenly, farmers with no idea of the mechanics of free trade or world market prices or commodities brokers were left to fend for themselves. Working mostly in isolation on their small family farms spread throughout the country, the farmers did not, and still don't, have the means to confer among themselves about the prices they're getting for their cocoa. They operate at the mercy of pisteurs, or buyers, who drive out to the farms and give each farmer cash to haul away his cocoa beans. (The farmers are generally too poor to own trucks.) It's difficult to know how much cash exchanges hands at the farm gates, but Global Exchange, an internationally focused human rights organization based in San Francisco, estimates that the cocoa farmers make between $30 and $100 a year. Transfair USA, the only independent third-party certifier of Fair Trade practices in the United States, estimates that farmers earn about one cent for each 60-cent candy bar that's sold here.

Oh well - it's off to the food co-ops for the stuff from properly-paid farmers.