Updating my list of slave-free chocolate in Australia

It's been awhile since I've updated this post so I thought I'd do it now. The good news is that the biggest change in my update is that I've added more chocolate brands in the slave-free categories

Totally Slave-Free
The following chocolate brands are fairtrade certified.

• Scarborough Fair
• Cocolo
• Maya Gold (from Green and Blacks)
• Alter Eco
• Dagoba (not their whole range - again, look for the Label)
• Chocolatier Milk and Dark Chocolate Things - available in selected Coles and on counters in Starbucks
• Oxfam Shops carry a range of Oxfam Fairtrade Certified chocolates

Totally Slave-Free, but....

The following brands are slave-free. However, ethically-sourced cocoa is not a core value in their business. Rather, it is more a by-product of either gaining more profits (by appealing to ethical consumers); or because it is a condition of them gaining organic accreditation. As a result, I believe these chocolate brands should be kept on a "watching brief" as I believe that if accreditation standards change or if ethical consumption proves to be unprofitable, then these chocolates *may* end up buying cocoa harvested by child slaves.

• Green and Blacks - organic chocolate that is also slave free. Having said that, this brand is owned by Cadbury's who are NOT slave-free.

• Kaoka

• Rupunzel

• Tava

• Abundant Earth

• Endangered Species (also carries a strong environmental message and 10% of profits go to save endangered animal species)- I've put Endangered Species here because they are saying they are carrying out audits on their suppliers BUT those audits are no longer independent. Still they are listing their suppliers, so to my knowledge they are slave-free.

• Just Organic

• Any other chocolate that has Australian Certified Organic accreditation. (There are heaps of accreditation systems but ACO requires that all ingredients in the product are produced in accordance with Internation Labour Laws (this includes no slavery in the production process).

• Chocolate that has NASAA Certified Organic Accreditation. The NASAA standards includes the following standards:

8.1.1 Where national laws fail to address social justice then operators shall have a verbal or written policy on social justice. Operators who hire fewer than ten (10) persons for labour and those who operate under a state system that enforces social laws may not be required to have such a policy. At a minimum, and where relevant, such a policy should include:
8.1.2 In cases where production is based on violation of basic human rights and clear cases of social injustice, that product cannot be declared as organic. The certification applicant shall not engage in or support the use of corporal punishment, mental or physical coercion or verbal abuse.
8.1.3 Operators may not use forced or involuntary labour.
8.1.4 Employees and contractors of organic operations have the freedom to associate, the right to organise and the right to bargain collectively.
8.1.5 Operators shall provide their employees and contractors equal opportunity and
treatment, and shall not act in a discriminatory way.
8.1.6 Operators shall not hire child labour. Children are allowed to experience work on their family’s farm and/or a neighbouring farm provided that:
• Such work is not dangerous or hazardous to their health and safety
• It does not jeopardize the children’s educational, moral, social, and physical
development
• Children are supervised by adults or have authorisation from a legal guardian
8.1.7 Employers shall provide all employees with potable drinking water, latrines or toilets, a clean place to eat, adequate protective equipment and access to adequate medical care.
8.1.8 All employers shall ensure that workers have received safety training.

Note that I'm unsure how they check this or how rigorous it is.


*Not* Slave-Free but....
These brands are not slave-free, however they have policies or programmes in place that try to minimise the more negative practices of slavery (ie beatings, torture etc) in their chocolate. They have education programmes for their producers in a (small) effort to change the more abusive nature of slavery.

• Cocoa Farm - have concrete plans in place to harvest cocoa ONLY from Australian crops. At this stage its unclear whether their crops are mature enough now to use in their chocolate or whether this is a future plan of theirs. I am emailing them now to see what is happening.
• Cadbury Range - including Picnic, and Fry's Turkish (owned by Cadbury Schweppes) EDIT: 5 March 2009 - Cadbury UK has announced that they hope to have gained Fairtrade accreditation for their Cadbury Dairy Milk range by the end of 2009!! To date they have not said anything about applying for Fairtrade accreditation for their subsidiaries too (including Cadbury Australia). So watch this space!!
  
• Streets (owned by Unilever)
• Arnotts - now apparently have ONE supplier who belong to the Cocoa Initiative. Not a great step but at least its a step.

Definitely Use Slaves and They Don't Care

The following companies absolutely disgust me with their absolute commitment to profit at the cost of abuse and deaths of children. Note that while many of the companies below belong to the International Cocoa Initiative, I have yet to see any real commitment by these companies to actually do more than just pay lip service to this issue.

• Entire Nestle Range
• Hershey (actually has a policy to *not* reveal its cocoa sources, despite a Supreme Court action to do so.... legal case still going...)
• Mars Company (includes M&Ms)
• Lindt

Sources of my information to compile the above list is in this post: http://consumption-rebellion.blogspot.com/2008/07/my-sources-for-my-list-of-chocolate-and.html