How Ethical is Your Chocolate?

Fatima Nagi

Abstract

The chocolate industry is a multi-billion-dollar certain brands of chocolate over others and industry. With today's increasing consumer how they feel about unknowingly consuming demand, big-name chocolate companies have unethically-made products. After the been implicated in many ethical issues. In this experiment, I handed each participant a study, I thoroughly researched each of these brochure detailing my research, along with a ethical issues, along with how four important list of chocolate brands that use ethically- stakeholders can affect each of the issues. An sourced ingredients that they could consider experiment was conducted with the intention purchasing. of finding out what drives consumers to buy

Introduction

With exponentially increasing consumer upset consumers and the threat of boycott are demands, big-name chocolate companies such causing many companies to change their ways. as Mars, Nestle, Cadbury, Lindt, Godiva, and One of the most notable examples of this is have been implicated in ethical issues, Mars Chocolate, one of the world’s leading particularly child labor. As defined by the chocolate manufacturers and the company International Labour Organization (ILO), behind Snickers, Twix, Mars, and M&M’s, who these child workers are working under has committed to using 100% certified, fair- conditions that qualify as the "worst forms of trade cocoa by 2020. Nestle has also made child labor." Constant public pressure from similar promises with their Nestle Cocoa Plan.

The Social Experiment + Action

To determine what misconceptions the price...etc. Piece ‘A’, was a Hershey’s Milk general public has about ethically-sourced, Chocolate Bar, made using unethically- “fair-trade” chocolate and how they feel about sourced ingredients, and piece ‘B’, a Cadbury unknowingly consuming unethically-sourced Dairy Milk, was made using ethically-sourced chocolate as frequently as they do, I conducted ingredients. After the participants had tasted an experiment where I offered my peers at both pieces and answered the questions for Stephen Lewis Secondary School two pieces of both, I revealed to them that one of the plain milk chocolate each - one labelled ‘A’ and chocolate squares they’d just eaten had been the other labelled ‘B’ - and asked them to made using what the ILO referred to as “some answer survey-style questions on their of the worst forms of child labor” and asked opinion on each piece’s taste, texture, them to guess whether they thought this piece

was piece ‘A’ or ‘B’. After I recorded their with a list of large, influential chocolate guesses, I revealed the correct answers to companies that use unethically-sourced them and asked them to answer one final ingredients, a list of alternative chocolate survey-style question for both pieces of companies that use certified ethically-sourced chocolate: “After everything you've learned, ingredients, and a section dedicated to the how willing would you be to repurchase this various fair-trade symbols that consumers chocolate? (On a scale of 1-5)”. Finally, to take should look for to guarantee that their action, I handed each participant a brochure chocolate (and other food products) are made outlining the findings of my research, along using only ethically-sourced ingredients. The Results

My pre-experiment hypothesis of “if consumer style question for chocolate piece ‘A’ (the one tastes and purchasing decisions are influenced with implications to child labor), meaning that, by whether or not their chocolate is ethically- after everything they’d learned, they’d be less sourced, then consumers should be unwilling willing to purchase chocolate that they to purchase unethically-sourced chocolate actively knew had been made with child after finding out that there is little-to-no labour. These results proved to be true even if difference between ethically-sourced the participants had previously shown a chocolate and unethically-sourced chocolate, preference toward the taste and/or texture of both taste and price-wise” was proven to be piece ‘A’ (Hershey’s) over piece ‘B’ (Cadbury). correct after I analyzed my results, as many Experimental research and evidence of my participants wrote down a number between 1 action are displayed on the network map on and 3 as their response to the final survey- the next page. (Fig 1)

References:

International Cocoa Organization. “The Chocolate Industry.” International Cocoa Organization, 26 July 2017, www.icco.org/about-cocoa/chocolate-industry.html

McGee, Mike. “How We Resurrected Audrey HepburnTM for the Galaxy Chocolate Ad” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 8 Oct. 2014.

Recanati, Francesca, et al. “From Beans to Bar: A Life Cycle Assessment Towards Sustainable Chocolate Supply Chain” Science of the Total Environment, Feb. 2018.

Figure 1: A network map of generated of chocolate stakeholders.

Figure 2: A brochure created to educate the public about the chocolate industry