{"id":1538,"date":"2012-12-13T00:44:03","date_gmt":"2012-12-13T05:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jayceland.com\/blog\/?p=1538"},"modified":"2013-02-27T07:40:06","modified_gmt":"2013-02-27T12:40:06","slug":"fair-trade-chocolate-or-child-slavery-free-chocolate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jayceland.com\/blog\/archive\/2012\/12\/13\/fair-trade-chocolate-or-child-slavery-free-chocolate\/","title":{"rendered":"\"Fair Trade\" Chocolate or \"Child Slavery Free\" Chocolate?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In researching fluoride, I stumbled into a blog and had to read the article titled As A Mother, I Refuse To Buy Child Slave Chocolate This Holiday Season<\/a>. And she's right.<\/p>\n

I am reasonably certain that chocolate that is certified \"fair trade\" does not touch the hands of child slave labor. But the rest of it: maybe, and maybe not. I don't know what the ratio is, but given the propensity to select the cheapest source to maximize profits, I am suspicious of the cheap stuff, and, well, basically everything that does not carry the \"fair trade\" label.<\/p>\n

And looking in to that \"fair trade\" label, the Fair Trade USA<\/a> website has no mention that they actually do any kind of certification. You can download the print-ready logos right from the site<\/a>. It's really a service to help manufacturers decide to select fair-traded sources. But there's no evidence that any company can't just download the logos and slap them on the side of their products. But, I guess, it's mostly better, maybe? It's all I have to go on, so I'll take it.<\/p>\n

So I've decided to stop buying non-fair-trade chocolate. It's like my decision to not buy meat unless I can get reasonable assurance it was from animals raised on a farm in decent conditions (e.g. able to roam a close-to-natural-sized habitat).<\/p>\n

But damn it's hard! I want to have my Raisinets with a movie, or buy a brownie from the bakery. I'm really a junkie for this stuff. I did even cave and buy a cookie that had M&M eyes, savoring every slave-picked bite.<\/p>\n

In all honesty, this is harder to quit than alcohol. It's really quite unnerving, especially since I can get fair-trade chocolate quite readily. It's just the innumerable habits I have of buying it spontaneously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In researching fluoride, I stumbled into a blog and had to read the article titled As A Mother, I Refuse To Buy Child Slave Chocolate This Holiday Season. And she's right. I am reasonably certain that chocolate that is certified … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,50,6,324],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-entries","category-food","category-philosophy","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jayceland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jayceland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jayceland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jayceland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jayceland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1538"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/jayceland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1799,"href":"http:\/\/jayceland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions\/1799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jayceland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jayceland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jayceland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}