Fair Trade: The Bane of Slavery

Guest writers: Robert and Kim Daisley

Chocolate: the new nectar of the gods; the perfect pleasure; the sweet seductress. Oh, and it supports a multinational trade in slaves. Of course, I didn’t know this when I was gulping down Mars bars to stay awake on night shifts. Well, I mean, I knew that chocolate tasted good even though I may not yet at that point have made up the lame metaphors regarding that great taste and the hold that chocolate has on our society, but I didn’t know about the slaves. I was listening to CBC’s As It Happens and heard Carol Off promoting her new book Bitter Chocolate. She described the atrocious working conditions of many of the people who were involved in the production of the cocoa beans that are used in (and crucial to) the production of chocolate. She told how the beans can only be grown in certain parts of the world near the equator and how Cote D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) is one of the main cocoa-producing countries. Off also described how the conditions in the cocoa industry (spearheaded by multi-national conglomerates such as Nestle) result in slavery.

When I called my wife and asked her to tune in to the program, she did, and found it very interesting. It also prompted a frenzy of research on the internet, covering websites from environmental, social justice, and capitalist (read “Nestle”) organisations. Of course, the information available conflicts in many ways, but after some analysis and discussion, we decided that the evidence weighed firmly in favour of supporting fair trade chocolate. Without rehashing all of the arguments for and against (google if you want to read them), the main reason that we decided to support fair trade was that we don’t agree with the concept of a multinational corporation dictating the “market forces” because of their near-monopoly power, the result being that the people who actually produce the goods live in poverty.

[caption id="attachment_359" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="When you eat Fair Trade Chocolate you are saving the world"][/caption]

So we decided that we’d try to purchase only fair trade chocolate. It’s not always easy, it’s not always fun, and it’s not always possible. But we try and I guess in some small ways, we’re making a difference. For the most part, we get our fair trade products in Brandon. But since we learned about fair trade chocolate, we also learned about other fair trade products including coffee which can be purchased at our local grocery stores. Kicking Horse coffee (including the “Kick Ass” blend) tastes good and feels great.

It’s not all roses. Sure, we feel better about our purchasing decisions, but it can be hard on the pocket book. The coffee costs $12 on sale and last two weeks. But you can buy coffee for half the price in a quantity that will last four times as long. So when you look just at the economic cost at the checkout counter, it’s a big difference. And when we bought the fair trade chocolate bars, Kim noticed that they don’t taste the same and wasn’t actually too impressed with the difference in flavour.

Our bottom line, however, is that we remain firmly committed to fair trade products, as long as it doesn’t cost us too much (for the moment, we’ve drawn the line at those fancy fair trade, organic cotton shirts that sell for $30 instead of $5).