Slave labor ---> Peppermint Patties ---> Thinner Katie

Today I realized that I have fallen off the wagon from my boycott of chocolate that is not fair trade. Sadly, my addiction to Peppermint Patties has to go. Hershey, the producer of Peppermint Patties and the dominating chocolate company in the United States, has consistently refused to be accountable for their cocoa bean sourcing for the past nine years. This means that, despite its record of community involvement within the United States, its products are most likely contaminated with slave labor. 

Since about the turn of the millennium, it has become widely known amongst those who are interested in such topics that 1.) most cocoa beans come from the Ivory Coast of West Africa and 2.) cocoa plantation owners often use child slave labor. Human trafficking and fair trade organizations have continued to pressure the major chocolate companies for the past decade. 

In 2001, the U.S. government became involved in--what else--creating legislation that was supposed to motivate chocolate companies to make their products slave free by 2008. A documentary called "The Dark Side of Chocolate" came out last year revealing that slavery is still very much alive in chocolate production. Even though Hershey has cornered over a third of the chocolate market in the United States, it has demonstrated the least effort to change. There is even a campaign dedicated solely to making Hershey fair trade. The campaign wrote a 42 page report last fall in response to what it felt was lacking in Hershey's first "Corporate Social Responsibility" report.


Personally, I have written to the three major chocolate companies and plan to become significantly stricter about my chocolate consumption. I have read a bit on this specific topic over the past year, and lists of fair trade chocolate are scattered over the internet. This is an extensive list I have found useful. Also, the summary below is helpful. Green and Black chocolate comes highly recommended by my friend from the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force and is available for purchase at Target. Whole Foods has a wide selection, and Trader Joe's also has some fair trade chocolate.


There are in fact many chocolate companies who according to company correspondence use cocoa that has definitively not been produced with slave labor. These companies include Clif Bar, Cloud Nine, Dagoba Organic Chocolate, Denman Island Chocolate, Gardners Candies, Green and Black’s, Kailua Candy Company, Koppers Chocolate, L.A. Burdick Chocolates, Montezuma’s Chocolates, Newman’s Own Organics, Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company, Rapunzel Pure Organics, and The Endangered Species Chocolate Company.

At present, no organic cocoa beans are coming from Ivory Coast, so organic chocolate is unlikely to be tainted by slavery. Newman’s Own Organics is one of the largest of the slavery-free companies. The company’s chocolate is purchased through the Organic Commodity Project in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It comes from Costa Rica where the farms are closely monitored.