

Your chocolate is picked by enslaved kids. - thenomad
http://www.kamikazecookery.com/blogs/210

======
rst
Might as well mention some local chocolate-making startups that pay particular
attention to their sourcing in areas with HN readership, to try to avoid this
problem:

SF Bay area --- TCHO. Factory and shop between Fisherman's Wharf and the Ferry
Building.

Boston area --- Taza. Mexican style chocolate made in Somerville, just over
the Cambridge line.

Bonus: the stuff tastes a hell of a lot better than what's on sale in
supermarkets.

Clickable: <http://www.tcho.com/> <http://www.tazachocolate.com/>

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Are they Fairtrade (or similarly) certified?

\- <http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/what_is_fairtrade/default.aspx>

\- <http://www.fairtrade.net/> (international site)

Fair trade has been making in-roads in the UK and we do now have mainstream
chocolate manufacturers that sell certified fairtrade products as well as the
smaller companies that sell only Fairtrade expanding.

~~~
rst
Both deal directly with local producers; neither has done the paperwork for
full FT certification. Taza's also committed to paying above-market prices,
and has an external auditor checking up on them.

FWIW, their own pages on sourcing are here:

Taza: <http://www.tazachocolate.com/AboutUs/Taza_Direct_Trade_>

TCHO: <http://www.tcho.com/tcho-is/faq#17>

------
Cushman
It's certainly horrible— more horrible, perhaps, is that not buying commercial
chocolate isn't going to help those people. There's always a market for slave
labor.

Is this a good place to talk about what a socially conscious individual could
do to actually fight slavery, rather than just not support it directly?
Somehow I feel like writing emails does not have a huge effect.

~~~
locopati
While those people may not be immediately helped by not buying, we are only
directly in control of our own actions. Do we want to participate in a process
that supports slave labor? If not, the first responsible action is to stop
buying the product. From there, one can find other creative ways to address
things.

~~~
Cushman
Let me restate that— Sub-Saharan Africa is not, in general, a nice place to
live for a vast number of people. These particular people are involved in the
production of a luxury export, so they happen to show up on our radar screen,
but the fundamental problems are not being caused by chocolate, and my buying
chocolate from someone else, or indeed the collapse of the entire chocolate
industry, is probably not going to do a lot more than make me feel better
about myself.

So okay, I stop financing slavery. What am I going to do to actually make it
_stop_?

------
JoeAltmaier
There's a spectrum of responses from buying less-objectionable nutty-crunch
bars, to financing a mercenary sweep of chocolate farms and whisking the kids
off to an orphanage.

I don't know how effective it is to change buying habits - are elephants any
safer now that we don't permit selling ivory in the US?

As dilute as the effect of changing my checkout-counter impluse buy is, so
must be diluted the responsibility for the crime. After all, cynically, 90% of
the cost of that bar is the transportation and sales cost. So only a penny or
so is going toward child-enslavement.

Sadly I fear that on the scale of ineffective responses, blogging comes even
further down the list.

------
lini
Something that the article did not mention is that money from the cocoa
exports are used to fund a political war in the Ivory Coast. A few days ago
the internationally recognized president there issued a ban on all cocoa and
coffee exports in hopes that it will prevent his rival from financing his
mercenaries -
[http://www.timeslive.co.za/africa/article869870.ece/Outtara-...](http://www.timeslive.co.za/africa/article869870.ece/Outtara-
slaps-ban-on-Ivory-Coast-cocoa-exports)

------
jacquesm
Much as I'm sympathetic to the subject this is not hacker news and I've
flagged it.

~~~
thenomad
I thought about this a bit before I submitted it today. My feeling was that
although it's not directly tech-related, chocolate's definitely in the Geek
Food Groups, and most HN types I know are concerned with being ethical in
their lives, even if they're skeptical of Big Green Movement stuff (as I am).

Nonetheless, totally respect your decision.

~~~
jacquesm
HN needs an 'other' category. But I can see why PG keeps it off the site, once
you add 'other' everything that is off-topic suddenly is 'on' topic and it
would probably take people away from the topical stuff as well as lead to
things that cause people to lose respect for each other (politics and such).

------
u48998
Here's the documentary that tells all: <http://j.mp/fzlrBu>

