Countdown to a Green Valentines Day - Day 8

Posted by A. Caleb Hartley on February 6th, 2008 filed in food and drink

Since we’re talking about Valentine’s day, it’s nearly impossible to not be cliche - so I’m not even going to try.

Let’s discuss that old Valentine’s Day fallback - chocolate.

Chocolate falls into the same area of concerns as coffee (which I pointed out in yesterday’s post), meaning you should be on the lookout for organic and fair trade chocolate.  I have not heard that “shade grown” or otherwise is an issue for chocolate production, so in that way, it differs from coffee production.

Read up on chocolate production, especially as it related to Fair Trade, and you’ll soon see why it is so important to pay attention to the chocolate you buy - according to Global Exchange, as of the year 2000, about 15,000 children between the ages of 9 and 12 had been forced into slave labor on plantations where cotton, coffee and cocoa are grown on the west coast of Africa, where most of the world’s chocolate comes from.

Fair Trade chocolate allows higher income for the producers of cocoa, which means that slave, child labor should become unnecessary.  As yesterday, following is a list of Fair Trade, organic chocolate suppliers:

• Ithaca Fine Chocolates
• Shaman Chocolates
• Sjaak’s Organic Chocolates
• Dagoba Organic Chocolate
• Equal Exchange
• Sweet Earth Organic Chocolates
• Theo Chocolate

Help mothers in Africa celebrate Valentine’s Day by getting their children back from slave labor - buy chocolate from one of the above suppliers for your Valentine this year!

Namaste,
A. Caleb Hartley

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Leave us a comment about this post, the site, or Valentine’s Day in general - and don’t get your chocolate fingerprints all over my nice, clean blog!