Do you know who picked the cocoa beans for your chocolate bar? Historically, beans picked by Mayans were treated like currency and were a deeply valued food source. When Cadbury and Hershey were growing business empires, plantation slaves picked beans without pay. We’ve learned that this slavery has not been entirely abolished. Browsing your local market, you will find that chocolate bars are dressed in labels with checklists of consumer concerns. Whether your chocolate is organic, GMO free or packaged in recycled paper, the most important information on the label may be that iconic Fair Trade Certified stamp.
Knowing the importance of Fair Trade certification (fair pay for labor) has become more common, but information never spreads fast enough. That is why Bitter Chocolate: The Dark Side of the World’s Most Seductive Sweet by the As it Happens radio host Carol Off is so valuable. Released in the United States this spring, Off’s book is a smart and captivating investigation of the chocolate trade, from ancient Mayan uses of cocoa though the rise of big chocolate business and the human lives compromised or out-rightly destroyed in its wake. Fortunately, Off closes with a more promising chapter that brings us back again to the Mayan cocoa farmers today and the efforts of chocolate makers who are helping transform workers’ living standards by choosing a Fair Trade business approach.
Off’s book provides a gruesome history of international chocolate trade, but she also offers encouragement that grass-roots activism and purchase voting for Fair Trade products can make a difference.
Carol Off’s book is a really important contribution to the realities of Fair Trade. I got my copy from the New Internationalist shop in Australia. They’re a registered Fair Trade Organization, so that was a double bonus. Their shop is at http://www.newint.com.au/shop Worth a visit.