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Chocolate


offense74
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Yeah, I dropped the chocolate habit after reading an article by John Robbins I believe titled "Is There Slavery in Your Chocolate?" I just stick to carob now, as caffeine even in small amounts has always made me feel pretty crappy. I used to be terribly allergic to it as a child.

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Although the "neutrality" of that article is disputed, I tend to agree that it is an exploitive industry.

 

We always look for organic and fair trade chocolate. But I've honestly lost my taste for it after researching it further. I stick to Oregon hazelnuts and cherries for dessert!

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There are a bunch of vegan dark chocolates from Europe that don't have bone char refined sugar...most likely they're vegan because they're dark chocolate...or made for lactose intolerant people...these are vegan but I doubt fair trade...but some may be.

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Does anyone know of any vegan chocolates that support this industry? The only kind i can find that are vegan are usually fair trade organic.

Don't forget the chocolate soy milk and baked goods containing chocolate.

 

true i guess i never thought about it since i rarely eat chocolate. Unless i buy chocolate chips for baking which are fair trade. thanks for the info ill be on the look out.

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Since the chocolate slavery scandal broke quite a few years ago (I think it was around 2002 when I first started hearing about it), there have been fewer and fewer companies who are using Ivory Coast-grown chocolate or cacao sourced from area that are known for such things. While fair-trade is always nice (and always ensures that it is grown without any slavery), there are still many companies who have vegan chocolate that don't have fair-trade certification that don't use slave-grown chocolate. While fair-trade certification is nice, chocolate may still technically be fair-trade even without certification. It's a lot like getting certified organic - you basically pay a certifying agency a nice chunk of money just to put their stamp on your product. We know a few companies that make vegan goods that are technically organic, but they don't get certified simply because they think it's silly that they should have to shell out something like $5-10k just for someone to look over their paperwork and put their seal of approval on it. From what we've been told, it's a lot the same for fair-trade certification.

 

I've never found a major brand here that does a great deal of vegan chocolate in the USA that sources from places that would potentially use slavery - there's probably a lot of really cheaply-made chocolates out there that may still use this type of chocolate, but for major brands, they're under a great deal of scrutiny and a LOT of them started publicly posting assurances about their sourcing many years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if a fair amount of the big chocolate names USED to use slavery-grown chocolate in the past, but I think that as time goes on after the scandal broke it's becoming less and less popular. Also, with the trend being much more for really unique blends of high-grade cacao in chocolate, a lot of production is moving into other areas like Costa Rica, Ecuador and other countries in Central and South America as well.

 

Sometimes I have to ask myself why it is that I know this stuff

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not all of the g&b chocolates are fair trade, acctually most of em aren't.

i like the "north and sounh fair trade", they are always both organic and fair trade. bonvita's stuff is also good.

They still have policies though, unlike Marabou for example. It seems to be a good company but I know there are others as well.

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