S4 E30 | Bittersweet Reality: The Dark Side of Chocolate Production

The Dissidents

Chocolate is the top-selling Halloween candy and is considered a must-have treat for the trick-or-treaters and eaters of leftovers alike. But do you think about where your chocolate comes from? Listen to this week's podcast to find out!

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This week's episode is part of an occasional series about coffee, and this week we actually take time to discuss a closely related commodity--chocolate. Our guest, James Hayes-Bohanan, has been doing research on political, social, cultural, and environmental geography of coffee for 20 years and by extension has learned a fair amount about cacao. In this episode James gives us an overview of growing, harvesting and processing, including an open secret of child exploitation and slave labor. We learn that the manufacturers of the most popular store brands are the worst offenders. James helps us understand the complexities of fair trade, small farms, and large cacao traders, as well as what we can do to find and support more socially responsible producers of chocolate.

Podcast Notes

Supreme Court decision in support of Nestle and Cargill regarding slave labor:
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/17/supreme-court-ruling-child-slave-labor-495022

An overview from Equal Exchange with embedded links to company scorecards and more:
https://www.info.equalexchange.coop/articles/who-grows-your-chocolate

Newspaper article Burdick Chocolate: https://www.sentinelsource.com/news/local/burdick-clears-the-air-on-rumors-of-walpole-chocolate-company-sale/article_1aa500d3-b4fe-518a-8c1e-2010b1b7a45b.html

Burdick chocolate partnership with Grenada farmers: https://www.jouvaychocolate.com/about-us

An industry site: https://worldcocoafoundation.org/

Living Earth Festival Symposium on Chocolate from Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCw5OE_2sgo