Tony Chocoloney!

Literally the only one to my knowledge that actually goes out to ensure they’re not just being lied to. They are also open about the fact that even though they do their best, they can’t absolutely guarantee they’re 100% slave free.

Orgs like “fair trade” for example just take the word of producers. It’s happened that a tv crew went out to visit one of their farms only to find child slaves at work.

Look for this fairtrade logo

Today I went to Trader Joes and got their in store brand Chocolate Minis. The ones I got were $2 a pack and didn’t say fair trade on them but slightly more expensive. The ones to the left said organic and fair trade so I don’t know where the cheaper one is sourced from.

For personal consumption, I’ve been eating Aldi chocolate which has some fancy name and it’s fair trade and ethically sourced.

I’ve heard Sprouts has good options but anecdotally I hear it sucks in comparison to Aldi’s.

I know Whole Foods is an option but I’m not supporting bezos

In similarity to coffee: Consider very small producers. The problem with coffe and chocolate is that the real taste only results from the last production steps (after fermentation and roasting). That means that companies that buy from many small farms (sometimes hundreds) have no clue which farm did it the best and thus the farmers also don’t know it.

But because only the farmers have a really strong influence on the quality of the chocolate they need to know if what they did was right.

Now a small company might have their own farms or work with very few suppliers they can give feedback about the quality. The farmers can produce better raw chocolate beans and the chocolate tastes best.

Also because the farmers learn their worth we westeners can’t exploit them so nicely and we avoid slavery.

I’m interested in everyone’s risk of slavery to acceptable to purchase ratio