It’s merger time in chocolate land. Now that Kraft has swallowed Cadbury, in effect outbidding the Hershey/Ferrero odd couple, Hershey itself is little more than an ant at the candy company picnic dominated by Mars/Wrigley, Kraft/Cadbury and Nestlé. And Nestlé feels a little piqued having been pushed to third place. What to do? Buy Hershey and reclaim the number one spot. At least that’s what a Reuters report suggests.
Chris Wheal’s take on Fairtrade Kit Kat
Check out Chris Wheal’s take on Nestlé’s decision to use fairtrade cocoa for a small part of its Kit Kat production.
UK’s Kit Kat to go Fairtrade
Nestlé, the global food giant, announced that, starting in 2010, its Kit Kat bar in the UK will be made with fairtrade chocolate. In doing so, Nestlé is following the example set by Cadbury earlier this year. According to the BBC, Nestlé sells about 1 billion Kit Kats a year in the UK. The beneficiaries of this move will be the cocoa farmers in the Côte d’Ivoire who stand to receive hundreds of thousands pounds as a result of the decision as estimated by Harriet Lamb of the UK’s Fairtrade Foundation.
ILRF Begins a New Chocolate Campaign
The International Labor Rights Fund began a new letter writing campaign to protest the use of child labor in the cocoa sector. The letters ask the CEOs of Hershey, Mars and Nestlé about their concrete efforts to limit the use of child labor on cocoa farms in West Africa. The campaign aims to end the aura of secrecy and the lack of accountability surrounding the manner in which the Harkin-Engel Protocol has been implemented. Go to the website and send a letter yourself.
And just in time for Valentine’s Day, the ILRF produced a new scorecard to help you understand your choices when it comes to buying chocolate. The scorecard rates companies as either bitter, semi-sweet and sweet depending on their record regarding labor issues. There are few surprises. As I pointed out, buying fair-trade chocolate is the surest way to ensure that child labor was not used during the production of cocoa. But the semi-sweet group shows that it is possible for conventional companies to do some things right.
