When it comes to chocolate, we’re spoilt for choice. We have Twix, Boounty, Snickers, Mars, Yorkie, Dairy Milk, Milky Bars, Quality Streets, Celebrations, Revellers, Chocolate Buttons, M&Ms, Lindt, Flake, Nutella, Ferrero Rocher, Milky Way, Galaxy, Nestle Crunch, Kinder Eggs, Kinder Bueno, Kit Kats, Millie’s chocolate chip cookies, Wispa Gold, Maltesers, Minstrels, Aero, Terry’s Chocolate Oranges, Jaffa Cakes, Crunchies, Fudge, Magnum, Lion, Smarties, Time Out, Toffee Crisp, Twirl, Wonka bars and many, many more. With Easter two weeks away, the shops are already beginning sell of chocolate eggs and chocolate bunnys. But for one Australian mayor, chocolate is a no go.

Clover Moore, mayor of Sidney, has banned Tim Tams and other “cruel” foods from staff meetings. A city councillor told the press, “Council staff told me Tim Tams were banned because eighty per cent of world cocoa production comes from the Ivory Coast, where there are allegations of child labour." Requests for comment from Ms Moore were declined, but a spokeswoman said: "No particular brand of food or drink has been identified as being off the menu”.
 
Ms Moore is not the only one concerned about the origins of her chocolate. A Swiss labour group has released images of chocolate bunny rabbits crying blood, with the slogan, "child labour is put into Swiss chocolate", to increase awareness about chocolate’s dubious origins.
 
Roughly forty per cent of the worlds chocolate comes from the unstable state of Côte d'Ivoire - the Ivory Coast. Deep in the jungles and bush land of the conflict plagued state, cocoa is grown in large plantations that leech the environment of it’s natural goodness. The plantations are often worked by children; estimates of the number of children working cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast vary between 100,000 to 500,000. The children who harvest the cocoa are often injured in the process - from machetes and other equipment - or become ill from the fertilisers applied to the crop. Rebels fighting the government continually poach off the cocoa farmers, knowing they isolated and desperate in the jungle.
 
The system that takes cocoa from jungle plantation to corner shop shelves is waited against the farmer of the ivory coast. Middlemen buy the crop from the farmers, haggling for the lowest possible price. The farmers often have little alternative but to agree. The cocoa is taken by the middlemen to storehouses where it is prepared, before being sold on to international suppliers. Cargill, ADM, Barry Callebaut and Nestle control roughly half the global market of chocolate and buy most of the cocoa that is grown in the Ivory Coast. Thanks to the middlemen, these suppliers and their customers - the makers of chocolate brands - can confidently declare they employ no child labour or can take little responsibility for the growing of the cocoa. Legislation in the US has tried to push for more responsibility, but the chocolate industry has missed two of the legislations deadlines on preventing child labour and increasing working conditions on cocoa plantations.
 
Chocolate‘s “bittersweet economy” (copyright CNN) doesn’t have to threaten “chocolate's sweet image” (copyright SwissInfo). Fairtrade farms have been set up in Ghana, and farmers in Cameroon are creating small, ecologically sustainable farms. Cadbury’s has recently announced it is working to create it’s flagship brand of Dairy Milk and other products with nothing but Fairtrade. If they are successful, fairntrade sales from Ghana will triple. What would happen if every other brand followed suit?
 
Words: Richard Lemmer, news editor.