Fair Trade isn’t just about coffee. Many commodities are subject to abuse by large trading corporations and large growers. Coffee is perhaps the largest volume, but tea, chocolate, sugar, bananas, and many others are also important.
Chocolate is subject not only to the normal trade abuses but is known for its use of child workers—slaves who are sold to the cocoa plantation owners. The Hershey Company [Hershey, PA] and M&M Mars [Hackettstown, NJ] have both been implicated in using slave-produced chocolate! As of the end of 2011, chocolate is still on the U.S. Department of Labor’s ‘List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor’. For more information, see Slave Free Chocolate.
Following is a series of short video documentaries from BBC titled ‘The Bitter Truth’:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Part 5:
Also see the documentary ‘The Dark Side of Chocolate‘.
More info on FairTrade