chocolate slavery

two words that should never be related, but this is a sad reality.
it's no secret that i'm a fan of chocolate.
what you may not know is that the majority percentage of the worlds chocolate is produced on the ivory cost of africa, and in large part the labor is provided by child slave labor.
i'm not going to repeat allot of information here, but do a google search for "chocolate slavery" and you'll find lots of information on the topic.

so what can you do to make a difference? how can we change a multi billion dollar industry?
first thing you should know, you vote with your dollars, every time you buy something you are saying "i approve of this item, keep making it exactly the same" corporations could care less about letters/phone calls/petitions. what they care about is money.

at this point you're possibly saying something along the lines of, "i'm just one consumer, the small amount i spend isn't impacting anything"
and this is possibly true on it's own, but through being conscious of what you spend your money on, and also telling others why, educating others, then we can start to make a difference. knowledge is power, the more people that are knowledgeable about their purchase decisions, the more power we have, the more influence we have.

so a buying guide for chocolate:
forget the major brands like Mars, Hershey's and Nestle. they could care less about the fact that they're the reason for the slavery.
instead, look for organic chocolate, it's better for you, often tastes better, and is slave free.
the other option, look for fair trade certified. fair trade guarantees that the producer was paid a fair price for their goods.
and fair trade isn't just chocolate, make a effort to buy fair trade as much as possible, check out their site for more info. www.fairtradecertified.org

if you can find fair trade certified organic chocolate, that's some good stuff.

so in the future, think twice before grabbing that candy bar, you can make a difference in the world, simply make knowledgeable decisions, and share information with the people you know.

and if you want to buy me chocolate, you know what to look for.

UPDATE: read the comments for some additional info from a guest poster and myself.