Friday 25 March 2011

Bitter Truths about Chocolate

A few days ago, as I was buying some stuff from the market, i picked up a bar of chocolate, i was reminded of something i recently came across about the companies that use cheap manual labour from  some countries, which include children in order to grow bigger and expand their businesses. 

So, i decided to find out more about this story on my own. This is what i found.

Some questions that came to my mind before i started my inquiry and search were:

1. Which are the companies in the market that manufacture and sell chocolate and which are the leading brands and where are they based ?

2. Which countries are the ones that have children doing manual labour to fulfil the targets of these companies.?

3. Which are the local companies in my own town & country that manufacture chocolate and how much of their work is independent of the foreign companies.

4. What are the steps that one can take if one were to stop this kind of trade to flourish.?



So,  here i will find & insert as much detail i have about this current day social & economic problem.



West African children exploited to make chocolate

Oct 8, 2010 2:54 PM | By Sapa-AP

A report says West Africa's cocoa industry, which produces cocoa is still trafficking children and using forced child labor despite nearly a decade of efforts to eliminate the practices.

A U.S.-sponsored solution called the Harkin-Engel Protocol was signed in 2001 by cocoa industry members to identify and eliminate the cocoa grown using forced child labor in West Africa by 2010.
Independent auditors at Tulane University's Payson Center for International Development said in a late September report that efforts have not come close to the target.
The report says that hundreds of thousands of children are still involved in work on cocoa farms, and are trafficked to Ivory Coast and Ghana, the world's two largest cocoa growers.

http://www.timeslive.co.za/africa/article697285.ece/West-African-children-exploited-to-make-chocolate


1. Which are the companies in the market that manufacture and sell chocolate and which are the leading brands and where are they based ?

List of Chocolate Manufacturers

1. Nestlé
Link: http://www.nestle.com/
Founded in 1860 by Henri Nestlé, a pharmacist, Nestlé is a multinational packaged food company located in Vevey, Switzerland. Nestlé is globally renowned with its several product lines including milk, chocolate, confectionery, bottled water, coffee, creamer, food seasoning and pet foods. Today, Nestlé is considered one of the biggest chocolate companies with a wide range of chocolate products such as Aero, 100 Grand Bar, Kit Kat, Nestlé Crunch and Rolo.

2. Cadbury Schweppes
Link:  http://www.cadburyschweppes.com/EN
One of the world’s largest confectionery company, Cadbury Schweppes was founded in 1905 and has its headquarters in Berkeley Square, London, England. Apart from confectionery products, this British confectionery company has also produced a great deal of beverage productions which has made the company a strong regional presence in the beverage industry in the Americas and Australia. Cadbury Schweppes has produced many types of chocolate brands such as Boost, Brunch Bar, Crispy Crunch, Crunchie and many more.

3. Ferrero SpA
Link: http://www.ferrero.it/
An Italian Chocolate manufacturer, Ferrero SpA, is a family business which produces chocolate and other confectionery products. Ferrero SpA was founded in 1946 by a confectioner Pietro Ferrero and is still owned by the Ferrero family. In each year, Ferrero SpA has produced many tons of chocolate which are used in manufacturing chocolate products such as Ferrero Rocher, Mon Chéri, Confetteria Raffaello and also produce the Kinder product series, including Kinder Surprise, Fiesta Ferrero, Kinder Chocolate bars and Kinder Chocolate.

4. Callebaut
Link: http://www.callebaut.com/
The second-largest chocolate producer in the world, Callebaut is a Belgian chocolate manufacturer which produces a wide range of chocolate products for consumers and professional chocolatiers around the world. Founded in Wieze, Belgium in 1850 by Eugenius Callebaut, this company was first operated as a brewery. Later in 1996, Callebaut merged with rival chocolatier “Cacao Barry” to form a new company which is now called “Barry Callebaut”. Its primary products are baking chocolate and cocoa powder which is sold to consumers and professional bakers around the world.

5. Camille Bloch
Link: http://www.camillebloch.ch/
One of the most prestigious chocolate manufacturers in Switzerland, Camille Bloch has been producing high quality Swiss chocolate for over 75 years. Camille Bloch is renowned for their Ragusa Chocolate which is filled with smooth praline cream and hazelnuts, available in a variety of sizes and package types. Additionally, Camille Bloch also offers four different Chocolate Mousse Bars, each of which features decadently smooth chocolate filled with one of four creamy mousse fillings. Camille Bloch’s products were distributed to luxurious chocolate stores all over the world.

6. Divine Chocolate
http://www.divinechocolate.com/home/default.aspx
Established in the UK in 1998, Divine Chocolate Limited is a manufacturer of Fairtrade chocolate products in the United Kingdom and the United States. The company is owned as a partnership between the Kuapa Kokoo cocoa, Twin Trading and Oikocredit. Divine Chocolate’s first product, Divine Milk Chocolate, was launched in October 1998 and followed by a long list of chocolate products such as Divine White Chocolate, Flavored Milk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate and drinking chocolate.

7. The Favarger Company
Link: http://www.favarger.com/en/
Founded in 1826 by a pastry-cook, Jacques Foulquier. The Favarger Company is a Swiss chocolate manufacturer which is located in Versoix, the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. The company is not only well-known for those who live in Geneva and the rest of Switzerland, but also available at many places throughout the world where good quality chocolate is offered. Its soft chocolate and exceptional taste are claimed to be made by the original recipe which has been passed down from generation to generation. The Favarger Company has its famous chocolate products such as Les AVELINES de Genève and Les NOUGALINES de Genève.

8. The Hershey Company
Link: http://www.hersheys.com/
The largest chocolate company in America, The Hershey Company was founded in 1894 by Milton Snavely Hershey. Globally, the company is commonly called Hershey’s and is also considered one of the oldest chocolate companies in the United States. Milton Hershey began to plant cocoa trees in his hometown, Derry Church, Pennsylvania, in 1903 and the manufacturing of chocolate proved successful. Since then, the company has grown rapidly.

9. Royce’
Link: http://rb.e-royce.com/archives/2007/03/royce_chocolates_and_confectio.html
One of the biggest chocolate manufacturers in Asia, Royce’ Confect Co., Ltd., is also known as E-Royce’, has produced and distributed chocolate products to many countries in Asia and other continents. Royce’ was first established in July 1983, with a total capital of ¥10.0 million and increased its capital to ¥30.5 million in September of 1985. From1990, Royce’ became a significant player in the Asian candy industry with many of its famous chocolate brands such as Dacquoise, Lurumaro Chocola, Nutty Bar Chocolate, Royce’ Chocolate Bars, Royce’ Pure Chocolate and much more.

10. World’s Finest Chocolate
Link: http://www.worldsfinestchocolate.com/
Established in USA in 1949, World’s Finest Chocolate is probably most recognized for its beneficent activities which help to raise money for non-profit organizations. Its $1 Almond chocolate bar that is used for fund raising can be labeled with a group’s name and fund raising purposes. This family-owned business has its headquarters in Chicago, Illinois, and also has a sales office located in Campbellford, Ontario, Canada. World’s Finest Chocolate is well known for being one of only 9 companies in the United States that produces chocolate “from bean to bar”.

http://www.chocolate-world.net/list-of-chocolate-manufacturers


Looking at this list of names, out of which 2 names are very familiar and common and home names.. which are Nestle and Cadbury. I looked into my shopping list and always had products to buy from nestle which include Milk Powder and of course chocolates like kitkat and others and cadbury too is a very homely name.
I was quite surprised at this..

2. Which countries are the ones that have children doing manual labour to fulfil the targets of these companies.?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_8583000/8583499.stm


Tracing the bitter truth of chocolate and child labour

Reporter Paul Kenyon with cocoa beans in Ghana
Paul Kenyon posed as a cocoa dealer to find child labourers
This Easter, Britons will eat their way through 80m chocolate eggs without the slightest taste of how the essential ingredient in our favourite treat is harvested.
The truth, as BBC Panorama reporter Paul Kenyon discovered when he posed as a cocoa dealer in West Africa, leaves a bitter taste.
In an investigation into the supply chain that delivers much of the chocolate sold in the UK - more than half a million tonnes a year - the BBC found evidence of human trafficking and child slave labour.
Panorama also found that there is no guarantee, despite safeguards, even with chocolate marketed as Fairtrade, that child labour - as defined by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) - has not been involved in the supply chain.
Dangerous tools
By the time it hits the High Street, cocoa becomes increasingly hard to trace.
As it passes from farmer to buyer to wholesalers, exporters, importers and manufacturers, on the journey from cocoa pod to dried bean to chocolate bunny, it becomes more and more likely that the source of the bean will be lost.
Together, Ghana and Ivory Coast produce 60% of the world's cocoa. More than 10m people survive off the industry.
In a village in Ghana, Kenyon met 12-year-old Ouare Fatao Kwakou, who was sold to traffickers by his uncle and taken from neighbouring and impoverished Burkina Faso to work as a cocoa picker.

Ouare Fatao
Ouare Fatao was taken from Burkina Faso and sold as a cocoa picker
More than a year later, he had not been paid a penny for his work - the profits of his labour going instead to his new cocoa masters and to the uncle who sold him.
In the port city of San Pedro in Ivory Coast, Kenyon posed as a trader and sold on cocoa beans which had been produced by the worst forms of child labour.
It is at this point where the traceability of the cocoa ends and it can be sold on to major chocolate makers worldwide who cannot say how it was sourced.
The end buyer of Kenyon's child labour beans was one of the world's biggest exporters who in turn sells it on to several well known High Street names.
Fairtrade
Panorama has seen documents which show that in September 2009, the Fairtrade cocoa co-operative in Ghana which supplies Cadbury and Divine, suspended seven out of 33 of their cocoa farming communities in one of its 52 major growing districts in the country after they were found to be using the worst forms of child labour.
The co-operative, Kuapa Kokoo, is supplied by 1,200 different cocoa communities, known as societies, that are made up of more than 45,000 farmers.
Following remedial action by Kuapa Kokoo, the Fairtrade suspension was lifted in early January. The co-operative said it is the only time that it has failed an audit of its farmers' practices with respect to child labour in 15 years as a Fairtrade supplier.
Harriet Lamb, executive director of the Fairtrade Foundation in the UK, said the suspension of farming communities that are suspected of using child labour is evidence that the Fairtrade system is working.
It means that unlike other chocolate products, Fairtrade cocoa is traceable to the source farm and action can be taken when bad practices are uncovered, as happened in the case of Kuapa Kokoo.

cocoa beans drying in the sun
Cocoa beans are dried in the hot sun before being sold on to wholesalers
"We make sure in that case that absolutely we're not selling any cocoa on Fairtrade terms while we put in place the systems and structures to stop it happening again," she said of the recent seven suspensions.
In a statement to Panorama, Cadbury said it had not been supplied with any cocoa beans from any of the seven communities in question either before or during the suspension.
It said: "The fact that child labour issues were identified… is evidence the Fairtrade certification process is working."
No schooling
In Ivory Coast, Panorama met a farmer who relies on his eight-year-old brother and 11-year-old son to help harvest the cocoa that goes to the co-operative supplying Nestle as part of its recent Fairtrade initiative. In January, the company began selling Fairtrade four-finger Kit Kats in the UK.
Neither of the young boys goes to school and figures compiled by the US State Department show that they are among an estimated 100,000 Ivorian children put to work in the cocoa industry.
Although Nestle does buy from the cooperative that the farmer sells his crop to, the company said in a statement: "Panorama has been unable to provide us with any evidence whatsoever of child labour being used to produce cocoa beans purchased by Nestlé."
'Complete failure'
In America - the world's largest consumer of chocolate - US Congressman Eliot Engel proposed legislation nine years ago that would have required all chocolate sold in America to state on the label that it is slave-labour-free or child-slave-labour-free.
But in 2001, he agreed instead to an industry regulated six-point plan to put an end to child labour in the chocolate trade, with the threat of legislation looming should they fail to act.

Burkina Faso village
Impoverished villages in Burkina Faso are a source of child labour
"I didn't trust them at first, but once they came around I trusted them and you know the proof is in the pudding so to speak. If they became hostile or were dragging their feet, we could always resort to the legislation," he said of the United States' chocolate giants.
But lawyer Terry Collingsworth, who has acted against the chocolate industry, said the plan is a "complete failure" and it is time to enact the law that Mr Engel first floated nine years ago.
"Let's dust off that law, and if you mean what you say and you want to stop the use of child slaves producing products like cocoa, let's pass that law, and then we'll have something to work with so that we can successfully stop this crime."
A result of the partnership - a collaboration between Mr Engel, his colleague Senator Tom Harkin, and the US chocolate industry - was to establish a foundation to help end the worst forms of child labour in West Africa, known as the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI).
Executive director Peter McAllister said the chocolate companies recognise that there is a problem and are doing their best to find a solution to the practice of using child labour, adding that human rights issues are "complex and challenging" for the companies involved.
"If there wasn't a problem we wouldn't be here so we acknowledge the problem," he said of the widespread practice of using children - a sensitive issue on the ground in West Africa - both politically and economically for the families that need the income from their children working.
Mr McAllister said that is why the ICI is working in 243 communities in West Africa and has already made sure that 16,000 children are in school.
Panorama - Chocolate: The Bitter Truth, BBC One, Wednesday, 24 March at 2100GMT and then, for UK audiences only, on the BBC iPlayer

other important links to see:

http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/cocoa/3334.html

http://responsiblecocoa.com/partners/

3. Which are the local companies in my own town & country that manufacture chocolate and how much of their work is independent of the foreign companies.

Now the important Question is are there any companies that make chocolate in India, and if so which are they and where do they sell them.

I know that home made chocolate is sold by many in small towns like ooty where one gets delightful ooty chocolates.

INDIAN CHOCOLATE INDUSTRY
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Size of the industry
The size of the market for chocolates in India was estimated at 30,000 tonnes in 2008.
Geographical distribution
Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore
Output per annum
Cadbury has over 70 %share in this market, and recorded a turnover of over US$ 37m in 2008.
Market Capitalization
The Indian candy market is currently valued at around $664 million, with about 70% share ($ 461 million) in sugar confectionery and the remaining 30% ($ 203 million) in chocolate confectionery.

History
The Indian Chocolate Industry has come a long way since long years. Ever since 1947 the Cadbury is in India, Cadbury chocolates have ruled the hearts of Indians with their fabulous taste. Indian Chocolate Industry?s Cadbury Company today employs nearly 2000 people across India. The company is one of the oldest and strongest players in the Indian confectionary industry with an estimated 68% value share and 62% volume share of the total chocolate market. It has exhibited continuously strong revenue growth of 34% and net profit growth of 24% throughout the 1990?s. The brand of Cadbury is known for its exceptional capabilities in product innovation, distribution and marketing. With brands like Dairy Milk, Gems, 5 Star, Bournvita, Perk, Celebrations, Bytes, Chocki, Delite and Temptations, there is a Cadbury offering to suit all occasions and moods.
Today, the company reaches millions of loyal customers through a distribution network of 5.5 lakhs outlets across the country and this number is increasing everyday. In 1946 the Cadbury?s manufacturing operations started in Mumbai, which was subsequently transferred to Thane. In 1964, Induri Farm at Talegaon, near Pune was set up with a view to promote modern methods as well as improve milk yield. In 1981-82, a new chocolate manufacturing unit was set up in the same location in Talegaon. The company, way back in 1964, pioneered cocoa farming in India to reduce dependence on imported cocoa beans. The parent company provided cocoa seeds and clonal materials free of cost for the first 8 years of operations. Cocoa farming is done in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. In 1977, the company also took steps to promote higher production of milk by setting up a subsidiary Induri Farms Ltd., near Pune.
In 1989, the company set up a new plant at Malanpur, MP, to derive benefits available to the backward area. In 1995, Cadbury expanded Malanpur plant in a major way. The Malanpur plant has modernized facilities for Gems, Eclairs, and Perk etc. Cadbury operates as the third party operations at Phalton, Warana and Nashik in Maharashtra. These factories churn out close to 8,000 tonnes of chocolate annually.
In response to rising demand in the chocolate industry and reduce dependency on imports, Indian cocoa producers have planned to increase domestic cocoa production by 60% in the next four years. The Indian market is thought to be worth some 15bn rupee (?0.25bn) and has been hailed as offering great potential for Western chocolate manufacturers as the market is still in its early stages.
Chocolate consumption is gaining popularity in India due to increasing prosperity coupled with a shift in food habits, pushing up the country's cocoa imports. Firms across the country have announced plans to step-up domestic production from 10,000 tonnes to 16,000 tonnes, according to Reuters. To secure good quality raw material in the long term, private players like Cadbury India are encouraging cocoa cultivation, the news agency said. Cocoa requirement is growing around 15% annually and will reach about 30,000 tonnes in the next 5 years.

Brief Introduction
Indian Chocolate Industry
Indian Chocolate Industry as today is dominated by two companies, both multinationals. The market leader is Cadbury with a lion's share of 70%. The company's brands like Five Star, Gems, Eclairs, Perk, Dairy Milk are leaders in their segments. Untill early 90's, Cadbury had a market share of over 80 %, but its party was spoiled when Nestle appeared on the scene. The other one has introduced its international brands in the country (Kit Kat, Lions), and now commands approximately 15% market share. The two companies operating in the segment are Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) and Central Arecanut and Cocoa Manufactures and Processors Co-operation (CAMPCO). Competition in the segment will soonly get keener as overseas chocolate giants Hershey's and Mars consolidate to grab a bite of the Indian chocolate pie.
The UK based confectionery giant, Cadbury is a dominant player in the Indian chocolate market and the company expects the energy glucose variant of its popular Perk brand to be singularly responsible for adding five per cent annually to the size of the company?s market share.




Other Questions that come to mind:

5. Did the competition from these big companies end up killing the companies that did try to run independently in our own country? Which were these companies.?

6. Is there cocoa plantations that exist in india & what is the market like here?

7. What are the consequences that have resulted in regions affected by this kind of unfair trade due to the greed of these large companies to expand and profit their businesses?

8. Is India affected by the power of these countries to buy out cheap labour in developing and poor countries to further their prospects?

9. What happens to children after they are bought off as slaves on the cocoa farms? Do they have a life at all?

10. Is there a link between the rising problems in regions in & surrounding the ivory coast and the pirates at sea?

On a personal note:
This makes one thing clear and that the next time that i shop for goods, i will opt for indian home made chocolate. As an individual that is all i will be able to do to influence this trade in order for it to eliminate the unseen evils behind the manufacture and export of it.






There is a documentary that you can see about this : Chocolate The Bitter Truth Child Trafficking BBC Panorama Investigation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD85fPzLUjo

Another one if you can get it : 
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=331502629133

The Dark Side of Chocolate - a film by Miki Mistrati og U. Roberto Romano









So, India doesn't really have any leading companies making chocolate and imports most of it from foreign countries.

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