I would never steal candy from my daughter's trick-or-treat bag

3 thoughts on “I would never steal candy from my daughter's trick-or-treat bag”

1. I only liberate the candy my kids don’t like . . .

   Reply

2. That’s damned noble of you. 🙂

   Reply

3. In talking about your values, you say:
   “We are Making a Difference by leading with integrity and determination to have a positive impact on everything we do.”

   It has come to my attention that you are not transparent with regard to eliminating the use of child slavery throughout your supply chain, including raw cocoa and other such materials, especially in West African nations known to have widespread use of forced child labor.

   This bothers me a lot. I haven’t knowingly bought anything from your competitor, Nestle, or any of its subsidiaries for over five years, in spite of having loved their $100,000 bar. I look at the bar, and my stomach turns, because I can’t stand the fact that eating it would be furthering the use of indentured, trafficked, forced or child labor. It is not a situation to which I wish to contribute, or be thought to approve of, by my purchases of products from companies who are not actively engaged in avoiding it.

   I would rather not give up Reese’s Cups, but I will not be buying them, or any other Hershey’s product, until such time as your firm:
   • traces its supply chain to the farm level
   • sources from farmers who can show, through independent verification, that they do not use indentured, trafficked, forced or child labor
   • asks suppliers to end such practices throughout *their* supply chain, or finding new suppliers
   • is more transparent in your CSR reporting.

   Sustainalytics notes that Hershey does not have adequate policies in place to monitor your supply chain, and trace its procurements, nor do you adequately report your performance. In fact, Nestle does better in their analysis than Hershey does.

   You are not a signatory to the Commitment to Ethical Cocoa Sourcing: Abolishing Unfair Labor Practices and Addressing Their Root Causes, which lack is what originally made me aware of your lack of clear accountability in supply chains.

   September19, 2011 marked the ten-year anniversary of the signing of the Harkin-Engel Protocol—an agreement
   signed by the largest US chocolate companies, including Hershey, to put an end to forced child labor on cocoa farms by 2005. Now, six years later, you are still dragging your feet, while hundreds of thousands of children continue to work under exploitive conditions in the cocoa fields of West Africa.

   Your contributions to the work of WCF, COCOBOD, CocoaLink, ICI, ECHOES, and others, which don’t seem to address the issue of indentured, trafficked, forced or child labor, are of little matter, as long as those contributions fail to do so.

   You say you stand for happiness, and to making the world better in all you do, yet there is the spectre of furthering the use of forced, trafficked, or child labor in your acquisition of cocoa. You continue to run the Fair-Trade Certified Dagoba brand as it was run before your acquisition of it, but haven’t even started down the Fair Trade road with your other products. Why is that?

   It’s odd that your shareholders are not requiring you to pursue FTC, as it has resulted in improved sales for several other chocolate firms. Also, research suggests companies investing in fair labor practices and labeling their products accordingly improve conditions on the ground and drive up the demand for, and price of, their products. So why aren’t you pursuing FTC?

   While other chocolate producers heeded international calls to cut off trade with Côte d’Ivoire in 2010 and 2011, you were known to have continued sourcing from there, and possibly increasing your purchases from there. This is CSR?

   You also need to clean up your domestic labor abuses. Streamlining is one thing, abusing those who work for you is quite another, and that’s something else that makes me stop patronizing a producer or retailer of my usual purchases. Milton and Catherine Hershey must be rotating so fast in the grave that it’s a wonder that there is no exterior sign of it. Shame on you!

   I truly regret to say that I will not be buying your products until such time as you clean up your CSR act. I will be spending a fair amount of money in good chocolate in the coming year, but it won’t be on your products.
   ********************************
   Besides, Mo’s Chocolate Bacon bar has no equivalent in any Hershey’s product, nor do they make any saffron truffles.

   Reply