This post is a little bit less happy than the last one. I was recently shocked to discover that Hershey's Chocolate, one of the leading candy companies in the United States, has TERRIBLE business practices. A large percentage of their cocoa comes from West Africa in factories filled with child labor, forced labor and human trafficking. While other companies have been looking more closely at where their chocolate comes from, Hershey's refuses to do so and has no third party verification about the conditions of their work places.
Two girls on my ship have started a campaign for everyone on the ship to write a valentine to David West, the CEO of Hershey's, urging him to take a closer look at where our sweet chocolate snacks come from. As a ship of 700 college students all sending cards within a week, we hold a lot of power. But just think if each of us on the ship had their support systems at home send cards too. This is my plea to all of you readers to write letters to David West and your congressmen and to stop buying Hershey's chocolate; fair trade and locally produced chocolate are better options.
For more information, you can google this (its right there on the internet) or watch Chocolate: The Bitter Truth.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
Fair trade all the way!
ReplyDelete:/ but sad to hear this about Hersheys