Cadbury may have committed an unforgiveable crime a couple of years back by massively promoting the music of Phil Collins in that Gorilla ad, but it seems that the world's biggest sweets company is making steps to redeem itself – by paying its cocoa farmers a decent wage.
At a recent conference attended by Ctrl.Alt.Shift, we got the chance to put some questions to Alison Ward, Head of Corporate Responsibility for Cadbury. She was talking about the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership, their in-house project which works for sustainable farming conditions, but what we wanted to know was "why don't you just sign up to Fairtrade?"
It now looks like our voices, and the voices of other campaigners, activists and, importantly, shoppers, are being listened to. Cadbury has announced that Dairy Milk, their flagship brand worth an epic £300 million every year, will be Fairtrade certified in the UK by the end of the summer, and that they hope to switch the rest of their range over to Fairtrade in the near future. This means that Cadbury's farmers will now be guaranteed a minimum price for their product, and will also be paid a Fairtrade premium of over £100 a tonne.
When we vox-popped on this very subject a couple of weeks back, lots of people told us that they were put off Fairtrade chocolate by the price, or viewed it as an inferior product, so those people will be happy to know that Cadbury have also guaranteed that after the switch Dairy Milk will retain its distinctive taste and that a price hike will be avoided.
The announcement has been heralded as a major victory for the Fairtrade movement, and it will increase sales of Fairtrade products by 20% overnight. Harriet Lamb, who heads up the Fairtrade Foundation, has long talked about making the brand 'mainstream' and this is definitely a massive leap in that direction.
The question is: what's in it for Cadbury? You can be sure of the fact that, whatever the PR spin, Cadbury didn't do this out of the kindness of their hearts. Cadbury have done this because it makes good business sense - they believe that their customers want Fairtrade. That's why this decision is a victory for consumers – by buying ethically we've shown Cadbury that we don’t just care about buying the cheapest stuff we can, we actually care about the condition of the people who work to make it. Their decision proves that voting with your hard-earned can make a difference, and that's a lesson we can apply to all sorts of products, not just chocolate.
Of course, the decision will present a new challenge for Fairtrade favourites Divine Chocolate. While they can be happy that their efforts have undoubtedly helped bring about this change, they now have to figure out how to keep their customers coming back when their biggest name competitor is Fairtrade as well? They might want to remind shoppers that they are fundamentally a very different sort of company – for example, Divine is 45% owned by the farmers who work for it, something which certainly can't be said for the likes of Cadbury.
We should also remember that buying Fairtrade is the beginning of the fight, not the end of it. Don't think that just because that Cadbury hot chocolate you're sipping is now Fairtrade that you've done all you can to help the most vulnerable people in the world. There are millions of farmers in the world who aren't lucky enough to be supplying lucrative international markets, and who are still being punished by unfair trade rules and tax regulations which benefit the wealthy, not the workers. Changing those is where campaigning, protests and political activism come in.
But while there's still more to do, and while it's always tempting to be cynical about the motives of Big Business, the bottom line is that thanks to consumer pressure the million cocoa farmers that supply Cadbury can look forward to some much needed extra income to invest in their communities, and that, as Shanks & Bigfoot would say, is sweet like chocolate.