People are not prone to agree with one another. If you gather a dozen people together for a dinner party and the subject turns to politics or religion, then there is inevitably going to be an argument. There is one thing, however, that there is a near universal consensus on: chocolate is a wonderful and delicious thing. While Europe and the United States account for most chocolate consumption, the confection is growing in popularity in Asia and market forecasts are optimistic about the prospects in China and India (Nieburg, 2013, para 9). According to the CNN Freedom Project, the chocolate industry rakes in $83 billion a year, surpassing the Gross Domestic Product of over a hundred nations (“Who consumes the most chocolate,” 2012, para 3). If chocolate continues grow popular in Asia, it stands to become even more lucrative. Unfortunately, not everyone involved in the production of this popular sweet benefits. Today, over 70 percent of the world’s chocolate is exported from Africa (“Who consumes the most chocolate,” 2012, para 10). While chocolate industry flourishes under international demand, the situation in Côte d’Ivoire in particular illustrates dependency theory and highlights the need for the promotion of Fair Trade. Chocolate has had a considerable impact on the country’s economic structure and labor practices. During Valentine’s week alone, millions of pounds of chocolate candies alone are sold (“Who consumes the most chocolate,” 2012, para 8). This naturally creates a demand for product, which in turns causes a need for ingredients. The main component in chocolate, of course, is cocoa. Since Côte d’Ivoire provides 40 percent of the world’s supply of this crucial ingredient (Losch, 2002, p. 206), it merits investigation i... ... middle of paper ... ...f-2012>. "Slavery-Free Chocolate." Stop Chocolate Slavery. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Nov. 2013. . Ritzer, George. Globalization: the essentials. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Print. Walton, A. (2010). What is Fair Trade?. Third World Quarterly, 31(3), 431-447. "Who consumes the most chocolate?." The CNN Freedom Project Ending Modern Day Slavery RSS. 17 Jan. 2012. Web. 22 Nov. 2013. . Wright, L. T., & Heaton, S. (2006). Fair Trade marketing: an exploration through qualitative research. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 14(4), 411-426. doi:10.1080/09652540600948019 Zak, L. (2009, 04). Not all's fair in love of chocolate. Food Magazine, Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/198287549?accountid=12964
Today, production and consumption of chocolate is a global affair. People crave chocolate more than any other food. In the United States, the typical person eats 11.5 pounds of chocolate annually (2). What makes chocolate the food that is craved more often than any other food? Yes, chocolate tastes good, has a beautiful texture and melts in your mouth, but there must be more to chocolate than what meets the lips. In fact, chocolate is made up of chemicals associated with mood, emotion and addiction. Many people eat chocolate as a comfort food when they are depressed or stressed. The question is, do people crave chocolate because their bodies and brains are addicted to the chemicals in it or do people crave chocolate because they have a psychological attachment to it?
A teary-eyed young woman eating chocolate and watching romantic comedies has become so common it has become a cliche in American cinema. There is something about chocolate that makes the muddy, smooth, brown color so appealing that it causes people to consume more than 3 million tons of cocoa beans annually. Make Chocolate Fair, a European Campaign for Ethical Chocolate reports that cocoa farmers in West Africa live off of less than $1.25 a day, which means that a mere 6% of all revenues from chocolate such as Hershey goes to its farmers, while a whopping 70% goes to the conglomerate company. This 6% share is startingly low compared to the 1980's, in which farmers got 16%. (Make Chocolate Fair, 2013)
An article “Is There Child Slavery in Your Chocolate?” by John Robbins explains how chocolate companies supply their cocoa, and how it’s produced. Cocoa is grown in Ivory Coast in West Africa in high tropical climates. Robbin explains that West Africa is the world’s largest cocoa bean supplier it provides 43 percent of world supply. Hersey’s has by far the worst practices and policies, they enslave children from ages 11 and up, or even children as young as 5. They utilize them for abusive labor they force children to work the cocoa farm fields. Hersey’s is the world’s largest chocolate supplier they purchase their cocoa from West Africa. However, Heresy’s supply practices are by far the worst they enforce abusive labor as well as human trafficking
Claire’s Chocolates has a mix of quality, hand make chocolate products sold individually, in varying sized gift packs, and boxed chocolate. As well, the organization sells a variety of hot chocolate drinks for the chocolate connoisseur, along with quality coffees and teas. Each hot beverage is accompanied by an individual chocolate product and this also allows the customer to taste and experience a unique chocolate product first, before potentially purchasing it at a later date.
Chocolate or cacao was first discovered by the Europeans as a New World plant, as the seed of the tropical Theobroma cacao tree. In Latin, Theobroma literally means: “food of the Gods” (Bugbee, Cacao and Chocolate: A Short History of Their Production and Use). Originally found and cultivated in Mexico, Central America and Northern South America, its earliest documented use is around 1100 BC. The majority of the Mesoamerican people made chocolate beverages, including the Aztecs, who made it into a beverage known as xocolātl, a Nahuatl word meaning “bitter water” (Grivetti; Howard-Yana, Chocolate: History, Culture, and Heritage). It was also a beverage in Mayan tradition that served a function as a ceremonial item. The cacao plant is g...
Fair-trade is often the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about small coffee bean farmers and the coffee crisis. Fair-trade practices encourage the international trading community to use sustainable business practices that will ensure the livelihoods and development of small, independent coffee farmers (Utting 2009). Research shows that fair-trade efforts are attempting to alleviate the coffee crisis and have had little to no negative impact on Central American coffee farmers. Fair-trade practices are designed to provide farmers with a fair price for their produce. Coffee shops that sell fair-trade coffee beans charge extra but unfortunately the coffee farmers do not see the financial return from the fair-trade coffee (Sick 2009). There has been considerable media and hype of the ‘green’ or fair-trade coffee bean and how the collapse of the fair-trade coffee beans is the cause for the coffee industry. Consumer misconception has actually resulted in an oversupply of the coffee beans which only creates an even greater drop in coffee prices. But even consumer misconception about fair-trade coffee can be ruled out as a major cause for the crisis because Cent...
Semenak, Susan. "Chocolate in History." The Gazette [Montreal] 11 Feb. 2012, Final ed., Weekend Life sec.: H4. Print.
...ions in Europe and the United States, making chocolate competitive for the more extensive overall public.
Apparently, child slave labor has been out of hand in the chocolate industry for over fifteen years. In West Africa, children are forced to work on farms harvesting cocoa under inhumane conditions. They would be routinely beaten and would be given insufficient amounts of food. These children are stripped of their human rights. In July 2015, a report from Tulane University found a fifty-one percent increase in the number of children working in the cocoa industry from 2008/09 to 2013/14. In response to child slavery in West Africa, Hershey and other companies in the chocolate industry will invest $400 million by 2020 to increase the supply of certified cocoa and decrease questionable labor practices. They will educate farmers and their families of the dangers of child labor (“Lawsuit: Your Candy Bar Was Made By Child
We may think of chocolates as God's gift to humanity as they may soothes all our problems and suffering. But, have you ever wonder that these chocolates – sweet, good and pleasurable as it may, have dark sides?.
Central Idea: Explain how cocoa beans are processed to produce the chocolate we all know and love
Chocolate has been a staple for societies in dozens of countries for centuries. The existence of chocolate can be traced back to the cacao bean utilized by the Olmec Indians. Chocolate went on a journey from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, to Spain and the rest of Europe and eventually New World America. Although there is a countless amount of scholarship regarding chocolate, the research of Wilson, Dillinger (along with her associates), Lippi, Terrio and Norton have critical information pertaining to the topic of chocolate in Western Europe during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. All sources, with the exception of one of Norton’s sources, formulate a consensus from their research, that chocolate in Western Europe served multiple purposes
What if there was a way to consume and use everyday products while knowing the people who put the hard work into growing and harvesting them are being treated as fairly as possible? Fortunately, there is a way for the consumer to have full confidence in this while purchasing their products. What the buyer should look out for is if the product is marked “Fair Trade” or not. Fair Trade is a type of business in which it is established that the producer is paid a fair price for the goods they provide. Whereas some producers get ripped off and paid only a small portion of what they should be, Fair Trade ensures that this does not happen and gives the producers the full benefit of their work. Some may ask, “is it really worth it to invest in something that will only put a label on a product?” The answer is yes. In this day and age, every humane person should have the decency to pay a little bit extra to warrant the fair treatment of the producers. Fair Trade is quite a simple social movement to operate with rules that can be easily enforced and the range of products is large yielding it to have its strengths and weaknesses, as does every operation of this scale.
There are many myths and misunderstandings about chocolate. For example, chocolate is not addictive. Many people might consider themselves “chocoholics”, but the fact of the matter is that there is now actual chemical addiction. Researchers, instead, insist that chocolate cravings are stimulated by the “sensory properties”, such as the smell, taste and texture, of chocolate (Brody Pars. 26). In a study concerning the satisfaction of a chocolate craving, one group was given a milk chocolate bar, one group was given a white chocolate bar that contains no actual cocoa, one group was given a capsule of cocoa powder, a...
This means that each party can make choices. However in chocolate manufacturing one of the parties is often a large multi million dollar corporation and the other is a small farming company. Concern about the impact of this on small primary producers in developing countries lead to the Fairtrade agreement which Cadburys is a part of. By signing up to the Fairtrade agreement Cadburys agree to buy cocoa at a certain value. Last year Cadburys sold over 7 million chocolate products made with Fair Trade cocoa and this supported 65,000 jobs in