Woe, woe, thrice chocolatey woe

I must feast my eyes on these, because that's the only way I can feast on them again. Like many, if not most inhabitants of these British isles, I'm a chocaholic, and my chocolate-of-choice is Guylian. Altogether, we Brits spend about £4 billion a year on chocolates. But now the Archbishop of York, who a couple of days ago was awarded the title of Yorkshire Man of the Year, has decreed in his William Wilberforce lecture in Hull tonight that we chocolate lovers must buy only Fairtrade chocolate. Read our news story on the Faith Page. And also in the paper on Wednesday.

Chocolate gourmets - those like me who have not stooped to a bar of Cadbury's or Rowntree's for years - know that Fairtrade simply does not taste the same as true creamy Belgian chocolate. But once cognizant of the facts, as I now am after writing a news story about Dr John Sentamu's William Wilberforce lecture in York, I have no other choice. The Guylian have to go,along with all other non-Fairtrade marques. And I'm going to have to think about my favourite beverage, tea, as well.

So what are the facts? They are horrific. More than 12,000 child slaves and trafficked child labourers are working in Ivory Coast harvesting 43 per cent of the world's chocolate cocoa beans, according to Stop the Traffik.

Stop the Traffik tells the story of Diabate and Traoré, who had left their village in Mali to go to Ivory Coast looking for enough money to afford a bicycle. Instead they were sold to a man for about £50 who demanded his money back — in labour. The boys from Sirkasso met about twenty others in the same predicament and learned that no one was ever paid. They slept in a rectangle-shaped mud hut that initially had windows but when some boys found they could escape during the night, the windows were sealed shut. Diabate and Traoré remember eating mostly bananas, though they would gobble up the cocoa beans, as others did, whenever they got the chance. Many months passed, and the boys forgot what the purpose had once been for this adventure. Life became a struggle to exist, then hardened to despair.

They gave up thinking of escape. They were under constant threat of beatings if they were caught trying to flee and they had seen several boys treated savagely. They believed they were under a magic spell. Carol Off's book Bitter Chocolate has the full story. 'The chocolate cravings of an elite have been satisfied by the hard labour of an underclass,' she writes.

Oh dear. Once again, my own ignorance and addictions shame me. After doing the research for the story and writing this blog, the thought of even one Guylian makes me feel sick. Perhaps the Fair Trade milk chocolate sold at Starbucks isn't that bad after all. And in five days time, we'll have our own branch of Starbucks in the lobby of The Times' building in Pennington Street. (This marks a definite improvement on my first paper, The Birmingham Post, where I was an habitue of our own exclusive subterranean pub, The Printer's Devil.)

Time for another major life change. And maybe this is one way the people of York can make clear their feelings about Nestle Rowntree's latest decision, to move Smartie production to Germany. Just stop buying those Smarties! And Dr Sentamu no longer has to worry about Terry's. Kraft closed that one down last year.

Comments

[David Cohen]

When Fairtrade produce edible chocolate, I might consider it...

[stephen clark]

With regard to the taste question...if consumers stop buying because of Fairtrade issues, and also then don't buy stuff that is substandard then the free-market laws tell us that things will come together!

[Peter Kirk]

Perhaps Dr Sentamu can get together with the business people of York to buy up the redundant chocolate factories in their city to make high quality chocolate, even to compete with Guylian, from Fairtrade only ingredients. But it is no use complaining if no one even tries that.

[Malcolm Bowden]

I can certainly recommend Fairtrade tea, Ruth. It stands up very well indeed to average commercial brands.

On the wider front, three cheers to Archbishop Sentamu for raising the issue. Coincidentally (or perhaps not?) there was a chilling report yesterday on BBC 2's Newsnight highlighting the plight of school children in Uzbekistan who are forced (by their own Government it appears) to work in the cotton fields during the picking season and schools are being closed for the duration. The conditions are tantamount to slave labour and the cotton, of course, goes to the West where it is incorporated into the extremely cheap garments sold in the High Street. There seems to be a fairly direct correlation here between our insatiable appetite for cheap cotton T-shirts and the use of child and other forms of slave labour.

We can do something about it and I hope that the Archbishop with his charismatic personality may prove to be a much needed latter day Wilberforce

[JP]

Totally off-topic, Ruth, but do you have any further information about what on earth is going on at SPCK? Dave Walker has a piece this morning, but there don't seem to be many hard facts floating round yet.

(look at my latest blog on it, the comments are v enlightening....)

[Peter Farrington]

Green and Blacks say that some at least of their products are Fair Trade, and they are currently running a survey which allows visitors to say that Fair Trade is something important to them.

http://www.greenandblacks.com

I don't work for Green and Blacks but I like eating it.