March was an exciting time for the Don’t Trade Lives campaign and its supporters. One of the world’s largest chocolate manufacturers, Cadbury, announced ................................What does this mean for producers? The commitment made by Cadbury triples the amount of Fairtrade cocoa ..................You can call Cadbury Schweppes today on 1800 250 260 to see whether they plan to use Fairtrade cocoa in their Australian chocolate range too.
I noticed in Coles this afternoon that they sell Chocolatier Easter eggs. Which are of course fairtrade Chocolates. I've got no idea what they taste like. Let me know if they are any good.
This is a copy of a press release from the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation for Aust and NZ.
MEDIA RELEASE
5 March 2009
Cadbury commitment to cocoa growers welcomed
Fairtrade Labelling Australia and New Zealand (FLANZ) welcomes yesterday's announcement by Cadbury's in the United Kingdom (UK) of its decision to partner with the global Fairtrade system in bringing sustainable development to cocoa growing communities in Ghana.
"The commitment by Cadbury's to achieve Fairtrade Certification for its flagship product, Cadbury Dairy Milk, across the UK and Ireland by August 2009 is great news for cocoa farmers and farming communities in West Africa,” Fairtrade Operations Manager (Australia) Cameron Neil said.
"This is a first - and significant - step for Cadbury's in an exciting partnership between the company, Fairtrade globally, and cocoa growing communities, to together tackle the poverty that characterises the bottom of cocoa supply chains - poverty that underpins the problems of child traffiking and labour that everyone recognises are a problem in West African cocoa production,” he said.
“Fairtrade Labelling Australia and New Zealand will continue to work with its partners and Cadbury's to achieve Fairtrade Certification of Cadbury's products in the Australian market as soon as possible.
"Australians want to be able to choose their favourite brands of chocolate knowing that cocoa farmers and their families are getting a fair deal. “Yesterday’s announcement takes us a big step closer to making this choice a reality,” Mr Neil said. ENDS www.fairtrade.com.au
The Good new - Cadbury Australia is working towards fairtrade Certification The Bad news - No date has been set. I'll keep you posted.
I'll be posting a fairtrade chocolate shopping list soon.
Uk and Irland Cadbury are going fair trade very soon. I can't quite work out when Cadbury Australia is going fair Trade. It seems to me no date has been set on it?
Black Gold Movie — Wake up and smell the coffee Multinational coffee companies now rule our shopping malls and supermarkets and dominate the industry worth over $80 billion, making coffee the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil.
But while we continue to pay for our lattes and cappuccinos, the price paid to coffee farmers remains so low that many have been forced to abandon their coffee fields.
Nowhere is this paradox more evident than in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. Tadesse Meskela is one man on a mission to save his 74,000 struggling coffee farmers from bankruptcy. As his farmers strive to harvest some of the highest quality coffee beans on the international market, Tadesse travels the world in an attempt to find buyers willing to pay a fair price.
Against the backdrop of Tadesse's journey to London and Seattle, the enormous power of the multinational players that dominate the world's coffee trade becomes apparent. New York commodity traders, the international coffee exchanges, and the double dealings of trade ministers at the World Trade Organisation reveal the many challenges Tadesse faces in his quest for a long term solution for his farmers.
"Our hope is one day the consumer will understand what they are drinking. It is not only on coffee, all products are getting a very low price - and the producers are highly affected." TADESSE MESKELA, Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union.
It is estimated that in the West African nation of the Ivory Coast alone, more than 600,000 children work on cocoa fields.
Children in the cocoa fields are being exposed to dangerous practices such as the unprotected use of chemicals, carrying heavy loads, brush burning and using machetes.
About half of these children do not go to school. There is also evidence of children being trafficked.
It is estimated up to 12,000 children have been trafficked for cocoa in West Africa.
Most of the cocoa of the chocolate that we eat is from the Ivory Coast. Most of the Companies of the chocolate that we eat do not guarantee that their products are free of child slavery. On the website http://www.fta.org.au/?q=locator you can surf around and check out fair trade stuff. I still haven't found where to find which products are fair trade and which ones aren't. Let me know if you find it.
I'm sorry, but you are going to be annoyed. But you can thank me for your weight loss ;). Apparently Cadbury do not guarantee that there products are free of child slavery. Darn it! ;) You probably new that, right?
It's really simple. Don't buy Chocolate unless it is fair trade chocolate! Chocolate products will have a fair trade symbol on them if they are fair trade.
This is a really cool story. You can can check out more about Tony and his Chocolate on his website. This article is taken from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1625697,00.html?xid=rss-world
The Amsterdam offices of TV producers Teun van de Keuken and Maurice Dekkers are pretty much what you'd expect: an editing room, a storage room, and a room with a scenic fake backdrop for filming interviews. The only clue that this isn't movie business as usual is the boxes and boxes of T-shirts and bright red-wrapped chocolate bars scattered on almost every surface.
"I never thought I'd be a candy man," says Van de Keuken with a laugh. "But that's what the job asks from me for now." Teun — or Tony — is certainly an unlikely chocolatier. A journalist and filmmaker, he produces a popular Michael Moore-style consumer advocacy TV program. But after learning that in Cote d'Ivoire, which produces some 40% of the world's cocoa, tens of thousands of children are forced to work on plantations, many of them in virtual slavery, the chocolate lover became a chocolate maker.
"It's so strange that we in our rich Western society eat our chocolate without thinking about it," says Van de Keuken. "We just want to pay the lowest possible price, and in another part of the world, these people are forced to work in the most horrific circumstances."
The filmmaker's first act of protest was personal. One day he ate 19 chocolate bars and then turned himself into police for knowingly buying a product made with slave labor, something he says is criminal under Dutch law. "At first, I just called the police and said I did a terrible thing. They said, 'Don't worry, we all eat chocolate, good-bye.' Then I hired a lawyer."
His attempt to prosecute himself was dismissed by the court, but Van de Keuken launched an appeal. In the meantime, he took his TV show to Burkina Faso to find some of the children forced to work on the cocoa plantations — kids, he says, who had never tasted chocolate until he gave them some. (They liked it.) Van de Keuken says recruiters from the Ivory Coast cross the border into the destitute country and lure children over with promises of money or even bicycles. Once they get there, he says, "they're forced to work, not paid, and not allowed to leave — the U.N. definition of slavery."
Frustrated by the progress of efforts such as the 2001 Harkin-Engel protocol (named after the U.S. lawmakers who promoted it) to ensure that chocolate consumed in the West was made from slavery-free cocoa, Van de Keuken began producing his own.
His chocolate bars, made from cocoa produced by a 45,000 member collective in Ghana, are called Tony's Chocolonely, and Van de Keuken says they were the first on the market to be packaged as slavery-free. Van de Keuken says the bars were an overnight success. "That shows that people really want this and that they're aware of how things are made," he says. "You have to just tell them and show them what reality is."
As for the chocolatier's criminal case against himself, last month an appeals judge agreed with the lower court that prosecutors don't have to charge Van de Keuken if they don't want to. But in an unusual move, the judge found there are "justifiable grounds" to believe that serious crimes are being committed in the Ivory Coast, something that Van de Keuken says pleasantly surprised him.
"He also said that not only you, Teun van de Keuken, but other consumers in Holland and the rest of the world are responsible for these atrocities," he says.
It's still a disappointing end to the case for Van de Keuken, who is considering having a child slave bring a civil suit against him in the future.
For now, he's hard at work on his feature film Tony and the Chocolate Factory, which he hopes to release by year's end. And, of course, there's the chocolate business. Van de Keuken is under no illusion that his treats have stopped child slavery. In fact, recognizing that even he can't guarantee 100% slavery-free chocolate at this point, he's changed his packaging. His bars now promise they're "On the way to becoming 100 percent slavery-free."
I'll be writing more about fair trade chocolate later this week. Its a bit depressing especially for me. You can also check out this link http://www.fta.org.au/locator?PHPSESSID=6a7dea1500b89f8a07bc9770872074df
When you were growing up did you like annoying your brother and sister?...... I bet you did! :) My kids love annoying each other when I'm not watching. Samuel is great at annoying Carissa. He knows exactly how far he can push her without getting busted. So he thinks! I love annoying Reuben when he is sleeping. My other two kids would wake up screaming at me if I annoyed them while sleeping. But Reuben loves his sleep and nothing can wake him while he is in a deep sleep. I love poking him and watching his annoyance. He kind of puts on this grumpy face and turns the other way determined not to wake up. Then I poke him again and he turns the other way. It’s hilarious, whatever I do will not wake him up. He gets grumpy but refuses to wake up.
As a kid my Mum tells me that she had to carry me everywhere because a sister who will remain nameless would annoy me and I would start screaming or something. I remember my brother chucking me in the pool in the middle of winter to upset me. I was the youngest of four, poor me. I also remember driving my sister so crazy, she got so annoyed with me that she chased me around the house with a knife and said, “JUST SAY IT ONE MORE TIME!!!" HAHAHA....oh the memories. She said I was like Bart Simpson. Don't know why she thought that. There is something fun about annoying those close to you though isn't there?........ Or am I just twisted? ;) Either way, it's fun for me. :)
I remember taking this box of chocolates to work a while back to raise money for child slaves in Africa. I was selling those fund raiser ones. I remember this lady getting so upset I was selling chocolates to raise money for child slaves with chocolates that were made by child slaves. Made by child slaves? What? hahaha how funny I thought. Every time I saw her I offered some chocolates to her "Would you like some chocolates made by child slaves? ;)" In hindsight not the brightest thing to say. I didn't quite catch how passionate about it she was. After I had said it maybe twice to her she blew her top!! hmmm..awkward moment.
I went home and did my own research and it turns out she was right.
If you don't have 3 minutes to watch this video, at least watch the first 60 seconds.
This blog is a little bit about me and mostly about being LOUD about making poverty history! I've got an awesome wife NAOMI(The cre8ive one). 3 kids - SAM 9(The brain),REUBEN 8(Playstation addict and Computer wiz) and Carissa 5(The Princess).
