Yup. That's a bit of product placement there-- Enjoy, Green and Black's are the best.
Of course, as we all know Easter eggs have nothing to do with the Christian festival (aside from this one). But I bet most people will have had one or two by now (I have; my mum sent me mini eggs, they're so cute). The big question hanging over them is, of course-- is your chocolate Fairtrade?
Now, I know a lot of people who are sick to the back teeth of folk going on about Fairtrade. What does it matter if we make the effort to buy Fairtrade bananas, or Fairtrade coffee Or chocolate? It's one thing; how does that make up for the shedload of shopping we can't go Fairtrade on?
Of course, as we all know Easter eggs have nothing to do with the Christian festival (aside from this one). But I bet most people will have had one or two by now (I have; my mum sent me mini eggs, they're so cute). The big question hanging over them is, of course-- is your chocolate Fairtrade?
Now, I know a lot of people who are sick to the back teeth of folk going on about Fairtrade. What does it matter if we make the effort to buy Fairtrade bananas, or Fairtrade coffee Or chocolate? It's one thing; how does that make up for the shedload of shopping we can't go Fairtrade on?
"We support certification because we believe that is if a company doesn't know where their problems are, they can't start dealing with them. Standards bodies are the best tool we know to address these issues in the supply chain."-- Antonie Fountain, Stop The Traffik Cocoa Campaign Coordinator
The labour of trafficked children is systematically used in the production of cocoa in the Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa. This is where most of the chocolate we buy in our local shops comes from. Hundreds of thousands of children as young as ten (do you know any ten-year olds?) work in these cocoa plantations, trafficked in from Cote D’Ivoire and neighbouring countries to harvest the cocoa beans, forced to work long hours without receiving any money for their work. They are beaten and have to work in dangerous conditions using machetes to open the cocoa beans.
I don't want to support that.
As a Christian, I know I'm going to mess up-- but that doesn't mean the few decent, Christ-like things I do manage to do don't count. So why should the small changes I make to my shopping habits not matter? In the last six years, 4 out of 5 of the world's biggest chocolate companies have released certified bars, and have gone public with their plans to tackle child trafficking in their supply chains. If through my buying habits I can help persuade producers like Nestle, Cadbury's and Craft to work so they can stamp even one of their chocolate bars Fairtrade, then I think foregoing Galaxy Easter eggs is kinda worth it.
Anyway. Galaxy sucks.
Anyway. Galaxy sucks.
To read more about the campaign to end child trafficking in the cocoa industry go to www.stopthetraffik.org/chocolate.