Fair Trade Judaica (FTJ)

The Journey Towards Fair Trade Kosher for Passover Chocolate

I am having the (metaphorical) experience of spending 40 years crossing the desert, just like our ancestors.  The journey of having Fair Trade and Kosher for Passover chocolate produced is taking a lot longer and is much more complicated than I ever imagined.  Manna appears regularly in the form of amazing people whom I am lucky to meet, so I am being fed along the way!  Here’s the unfolding story…

History

In October 2010, I was first introduced to the issue of child labor in the cocoa fields of West Africa when I watched the documentary “The Dark Side of Chocolate” at the Fair Trade Federation conference.  I was so affected by the stark reality that I couldn’t move or speak for 10 minutes after watching the movie.  On the spot, I was inspired to suggest that we broaden Fair Trade Judaica’s mission from focusing on Judaica products to building a Fair Trade movement in the Jewish community; one of the key principles of the Fair Trade movement is prohibiting child labor in product development/production.  Our Advisory Board strongly supported that idea.

We received a small grant from Equal Exchange and quickly put together educational materials.   Fair Trade Judaica hosted six DVD screenings/discussions around the country and distributed the educational materials through other organizations before Passover 2011.  And the issue began to be talked about online and at Seders throughout country.  While there are many delicious Fair Trade and Kosher chocolate products none of them are Kosher for Passover. During that campaign we realized the irony of not having Fair Trade and Kosher for Passover chocolate.  While there are other environmental and social certification programs, Fair Trade is recognized as the strongest in terms of monitoring and accountability about child labor.

Why is Chocolate Such a Kosher for Passover Issue?

Chocolate poses a unique issue for Passover kashrut – most chocolate products contain lecithin as an emulsifier, and lecithin is usually obtained from soybeans, part of the “kitniyot” (legumes) category, whose consumption is prohibited during Passover in the Ashkenazi community.  This is not as much an issue in Sephardi/Mizrahi communities. The companies that don’t use lecithin need to add additional cocoa for the right consistency, which raises the price of the final chocolate product.  (Who ever figured I’d learn so much about chocolate????).

The Issues We’re Facing

Over the past year or so, we have spent at least 100 hours researching and speaking with about a dozen Fair Trade companies about their interest in producing a Kosher for Passover chocolate product, and with a few Kosher manufacturers/certifiers about sourcing Fair Trade cocoa.  Most have said that they’re not interested; their reasons include:

-          They don’t think the market is big enough and therefore no profit will be made.  This led us to distribute our Fair Trade Kosher for Passover Petition in 2012 () which over 1,000 of you have signed to show that there is such a market!).

-          There is concern that the potential extra cost of using Fair Trade cocoa would make their products uncompetitive.  Fair Trade chocolate is usually of a much higher quality than other chocolate, which accounts for part of price differential (not just the Fair Trade certification process)

-          There is concern about the cost of the Kosher for Passover certification process which can run several thousand dollars, a big expense for a small company

-          They are not interested in manufacturing contract products, e.g. a specific product that wouldn’t become part of their yearlong inventory

-          It’s just “too complicated”

-          It requires 12-18 months to design/produce/market new products and the companies have other priorities

-          Several Fair Trade manufacturers expressed concern about having the Kosher certifying staff in their kitchens for the entire production period and causing disruption

The Good News

On the Dayenu side of the journey, we are in conversation with a wonderful Fair Trade company who is conducting serious research to make this happen.  However,adding a Kosher for Passover certification will require major changes involving several different steps and players.  They are proceeding as quickly as possible, and we hope will be successful.

In the spring of 2012 we began a discussion with a matzah company about sourcing Fair Trade cocoa for its chocolate covered matzah.;  Given the complexity of their supply chain they need to order the raw materials by early summer for the following Passover season.  There just wasn’t time to get it done for 2013.  We have been doing research since that time and have identified one confirmed and another potential source of Fair Trade cocoa.  They are seriously looking at the competitive price issues,  as matzah companies compete for shelf space, so even a few cents’ difference in price could make a difference! 

In our conversations over the past year and a half, many Fair Trade chocolate companies told us that they have decided to explore Kosher certification, which would offer a wider selection of products, and perhaps provide another partner for us to work with.

What YOU Can do to Help us Bring Fair Trade Kosher for Passover Chocolate Closer to Reality!

1.       Sign our Petition to show manufacturers the deep desire and market in our community for these products

2.       Get involved as a volunteer with us to move this effort forward

3.       Read this Haggadah supplement at your Passover Seder

4.       Download a photo of cocoa beans on your Seder plate and talk about the issue; it’s free!

5.       Make a donation  to support our work and receive a “Virtual Fair Trade Kosher for Passover” chocolate bar for your Seder plate

6.       Learn more about the issue

7.       Host  a screening of “The Dark Side of Chocolate” DVD and educate others

8.       Contact us with connections you have to a Fair Trade chocolate company or a Kosher chocolate manufacturer

9.       Let us know if you’d be willing to work with  us on a crowd-sourcing fundraising effort to help cover the initial cost of Kosher for Passover certification

10.   Share any other ideas, suggestions, offers

Bringing Meaning to Bar/Bat Mitzvahs

We are pleased to feature this guest blog by Rabbi Deborah Silver, serving Adat Ari El in Valley Village, California.

We live in a world made up of stories.

When we’re young, we don’t really notice that even the objects around us have stories.  We can probably all remember how, as children, we desperately wanted a particular cereal,  toy, or computer game.  We might also remember how it felt not to get what we wanted.  But we probably didn’t ask ourselves about the story of that product – where it came from, how it was manufactured, how it made the journey from its place of origin to our living rooms.

It’s a sad fact of life that the ceremonies that mark the way stations of our lives have also been commercialized.  At the time of Bar or Bat Mitzvah, the worry about decorations, centerpieces and invitation design can all but subsume the moment at which a young person takes their first steps into being counted as a member of the greater Jewish community.  And while the gifts and money are exciting, Bar and Bat Mitzvah is a wonderful opportunity to remind the young person concerned that they have a heart and a conscience, and that everything has a story.

To become responsible for the mitzvot – which is the true heart of the Bar or Bat Mitzvah rite – means asking questions.  What is the story of this object, and how am I part of that story?  Where does this object come from?  Do I really need it at all?  Can I recycle it once I have had my use of it?  In purchasing it, am I making the right choice?

In the spirit of reminding our young people of the goodness of their own hearts at this special moment in their lives, we give them the gift of a kippah that comes with a story.  For this latest cycle, we have chosen to give them kippot made by Mayan Hands, together with a letter explaining the origins of the kippah and the community from which it came.

By doing this, we hope to remind them that they are part of a greater whole, a whole in which choices matter, stories matter, and in which they themselves can be agents for fairness, compassion and change.

Fair Trade S’more Summer

Summer solstice is today and I’m already dreaming of my first s’more of the season!

One of my favorite memories as a child was practicing how to make the absolutely perfect s’more (marshmallow gooey but not burned, and getting it onto the graham cracker before it fell off) using a Hershey chocolate bar. But since I learned about forced child labor in the chocolate industry, it doesn’t sound very delicious anymore. Tens of thousands of children work in cocoa fields, exposed to hazardous conditions where they spray pesticides without protective gear, use sharp tools, and sustain injuries.

The GOOD news: There are lots of fair trade Kosher chocolates to choose from, and child labor is prohibited in Fair Trade certification.

There are several new Fair Trade Kosher chocolates that we’ve learned about this past year, including Tcho (an artisanal chocolate maker in San Francisco, new milk chocolate mini’s from Equal Exchange, and, finally, a real Fair Trade chocolate bar from Trader Joe’s (Belgian bars in dark or milk chocolate with the IMO “Fair for Life” certification).

Hershey’s is the only chocolate company in the U.S. which is not using any fair trade cocoa beans in its products. Join Fair Trade Judaica and the Jewish community in encouraging Hershey’s to support fair trade and child labor-free chooclate.

I’m looking forward to enjoying my first delicious Fair Trade s’more this weekend!

DVD Inspires 12 Year-old’s “SLAVERY IN CHOCOLATE MAKING”

Fair Trade Judaica is excited to bring you this guest blog by Jesse Noily, 12 years old of Oakland, CA.  He was introduced to our “Bean of Affliction: Chocolate, Child Labor, and Choosing Fair Trade” campaign at a friend’s Passover Seder.  He decided to focus on this issue for a year-end report at school.  After watching “The Dark Side of Chocolate” DVD and visiting a local fair trade chocolate company, he wrote this report and made a video (Coming soon!).  If you’d like to watch or show the DVD, here’s a link to it and our screening guide:

BITTERSWEET – SLAVERY IN CHOCOLATE MAKING
By Jesse Noily
The Story of My Search

            Chocolate. There is something so wonderful about it. Something so magically innocent about the milky, sweet Hershey’s bar. Or so I thought a couple weeks ago, when I first started this project. I hadn’t thought at all about where my chocolate came from. I had greedily eaten my heart out every Halloween, and on Valentine’s Day I nibbled away all the pink Reese’s and mini Nestle Crunch’s that had stuffed my valentine bag. And on my own valentines, I had carelessly put small Hershey’s bars, classic milk chocolate and dark with almonds, Krackel and Mr. Goodbar. But if I had known then what I know now I would have hated myself. I remember the day when I was first introduced to the idea of slaves making chocolate. It was Pesach (a Jewish holiday celebrating freedom), and we were celebrating with a Seder (traditional feast) at our friend’s house.

            Now our friends are not…traditional Jews and so at the end of Seder, when the adults are supposed to give the kids a gift, they gave me two packages of some obscure chocolate. One was made by a company called TCHO the other by Alter Eco. They then explained (more to my parents then to me) that most chocolate made by big corporations like Hershey’s and Nestle are non fair-trade, meaning that the people who harvest the cacao are slaves, kidnapped from their families and forced to work. I ate the chocolate, liked it, and forgot about it for about a year. But when we were assigned to write a report on s social justice topic, it immediately sprang back to mind. I love chocolate and it angered me that people were actually smuggling children, forcing them to work, paying them from less than minimum wage to nothing, and if they don’t work, or if they ask for more pay, they could be severely beaten or worse. It angered me how all these companies had covered up these facts so well. But mostly it angered me that all this time I had eaten away at these inglorious goodies the whole twelve years I’ve been in this world, and have been clueless as to where the actual chocolate came from.

            I started my search with my friend Nico. For our extension activity we wanted to do a movie together, so it would make sense to write about the same topic. When we first started researching, I thought it was going pretty easy. There were a lot of websites that had really useful information. A LOT of websites. But then suddenly it became obvious that all these websites and articles were saying pretty much the same thing. For a while I had the idea that wasn’t a lot to say about slavery in chocolate making. Then I realized I was only hitting the surface of my research. I went to the databases, and found some very interesting articles on kids protesting non fair-trade chocolate and boycotting Hershey’s and Nestle, and me and Nico watched a documentary called “The Dark Side of Chocolate,” about two documentarians who went undercover to a cacao plantation. Then I realized that this report was going to be a lot of fun.

 What I Learned

             For what I learned, I’d like to start with talk about how the whole chocolate making process works.  First I’ll start with non-fair trade. What trafficking literally means is trading and smuggling something stolen. In this case, the stolen goods are children. Children are lured away by the traffickers. They are offered money or a new bike, and when the children come close enough to collect their prize, they are grabbed by the traffickers and forced onto their motorbikes. In some cases, the traffickers circle a group of children with their motorbikes, fighting over who gets the best child. When the children are on the motorbikes, the traffickers drive them along a secret dirt road to the Ivory Coast, where all the major cacao plantations are. The kids are sold to the trafficker gets out of there with his money. The child is then forced to work, usually getting paid nothing, and just fed a few scraps to keep them going. What the child does is go around all the trees to find cacao pods (big, ovalish, smooth, long gourd like buds) and cut them off the cacao trees (Mistrati). You may ask why they can’t just have a machine do all this work. Well, the reason why they can is because of the way the pods grow on the tree. They just pop out from the branches and trunk like a person with odd growths sticking out all over their body. So anyway these kids walk around with huge machetes all day, cutting off the pods and putting them in a huge pile. All day, everyday, no breaks, no rest. The cacao pods are then opened up by other workers. When you open a cacao pod, what comes out is this white, larva-ish, marshmallow-like goo pods. In side these liquidy shells are the cacao beans. The cacao beans, after being taken out of their pods, are then shipped to all the major companies, who then roast them, turn them into cocoa butter and cocoa mass. Then those two ingredients are mixed with vanilla, sugar, soy lecithin and milk to create an ordinary Hershey’s milk chocolate bar (For a Crunch bar just add rice crisps).

            Now I’ll tell you the same process but with a fair trade company. For some companies, like TCHO, the CEOs actually go meet the people who make their chocolate. They make sure that their living is healthy, that they’re given enough to eat, and that all the worker are NOT slaves, and there are no children working either. They call this “going beyond fair trade.” The true definition of “fair trade” is that the trade is carried on legally and all the workers are paid a fair amount.  You see, its not like all the big companies have their own separate plantations. Hershey’s, Nestle, and Mars all buy their chocolate from the International Chocolate Company and the ICC buys their chocolate from all the small, unknown plantations that usually have child slaves working for them. But not TCHO. TCHO is making a point of making sure that the plantations where they buy their cacao from are fair trade. After being fermented at the plantation, it is then transported to their headquarters in San Francisco, where it is made into chocolate bars. That’s fair-trade. It is so simple.

            Equal Exchange is a fair trade company that sells bananas, coffee, and of course, chocolate. To avoid trafficking, Equal Exchange actually buys from no plantations in Africa, where all the trafficking is (Evans). This may sound ridiculous to you, but the truth is that cacao trees are actually native to South America, but they can grow between twenty and thirty degrees of latitude from the Equator.  You may be asking why all the companies don’t use fair-trade chocolate. I think the main reason is it’s just easier. There’s no international company for fair trade chocolate! The only way to sell fair trade chocolate is to make your own chocolate. Either that or use a different fair trade company’s chocolate, which is illegal. Another thing is it’s cheaper. The small plantations sell their cocoa beans to the ICC (International Chocolate Company) for maybe a dollar a pound. That makes it possible for the ICC to sell the beans to the companies for very little. Compare that to making several plantations of your own. Can you imagine how much that would cost? All this makes me admire fair trade companies even more. They could have saved a lot more money if they weren’t fair trade, but they decided to be instead. That decision is based on totally moral value.

Reflections

             This project was a lot of fun. As I was doing it, I felt a lot more like an investigator/rebel/detective than a school child doing a report. I had proof and statistics. I had interviews and phone calls. I was a reporter! I demanded the truth! I was determined to find the truth. It sounds cheesy, I know, but when there’s injustice in the world you have to be a little bit cheesy. You have to know the truth and fight against it. When I started to learn about the injustice that was happened to make the chocolate that I’ve loved my whole life, I started to snarl whenever I saw a Hershey’s bar. Whenever we went to whole foods I’d by a bar or two of TCHO or Alter Eco or Equal Exchange. I found out how much better they tasted compared to a sugar loaded Nestle bar. I told people about what I was doing, and I hope they changed their habits as well. I emailed the International Chocolate Company, saying that I wondered if they knew who actually harvested their chocolate. They never emailed back, but I really hope they read it, and maybe someone there would go to Africa and actually see what’s going on there.

Work Cited

“Interview With TCHO.” Interview by Jesse Lev Felder-Noily and Nico Ruben Inchausti. Print.

The Dark Side of Chocolate: Child Trafficking and Illegal Child Labor in the Cocoa Industry. Dir. Miki Mistrati and U. Roberto Roberto Romano. Danish Broadcasting Corporation, 2010. DVD.

Crossdale, Akilah. “TCHO Factory Presentation.” TCHO Factory Tour. TCHO Factory, San Francisco. 7 May 2012. Lecture

Evans, Kelsie, Equal Exchange. “Questions About Fair Trade Chocolate.” Message to the author. 4 May 2012. E-mail.

A New Year and New Resolutions

Given that my New Year always begins on Rosh Hashanah, I don’t often pay a lot of attention to the December 31-January 1 transition, but this blog from Fair Trade Vancouver identifies simple things each of us can do to strengthen fair trade, and support the farmers and artisans. I’ve made a few edits so that the piece is applicable to those of us living outside of Vancouver. And, don’t forget to think “Fair Trade” when you’re buying Judaica products!

 
12 Fair Trade resolutions for the New Year
By Bryce, Fair Trade Vancouver on January 01, 2012

It’s that time of the year again where the crazy rush of the winter holidays winds down, and all of us get to reflect on how we can make the next year a better one. This year, why not make Fair Trade part of your New Year’s resolutions? To make things easier, the team at Fair Trade Vancouver have put together a list of 12 ways in which you can get more involved in supporting the Fair Trade Movement.

1. Decide to switch one product in your kitchen to 100% fair trade. It can be overwhelming to do it all, but by choosing among the many food options (bananas, sugar, coffee, chocolate, spices) you help to support improved labor and environmental practices around the world.

2. Advertise! Wear a button with the Fair Trade logo.

3. Start a conversation: carry a bunch of Fair Trade bananas down the street or on the bus and if people are looking, tell them why the bananas are special.

4. Ask for it! This doesn’t necessarily mean asking the establishments you attend to carry Fair Trade, but simply asking “do you have a Fair Trade option?” helps to get Fair Trade on people’s radars. It’s great to have Fair Trade at home, but sourcing Fair Trade at a restaurant, office, school, or community event can help build a movement.

5. Pass it on: take a couple of Fair Trade chocolate bars as a gift when you go to a friend’s for dinner.

6. Start another conversation: In the checkout line, make a comment to the cashier or the person behind you about how much you love the Fair Trade chocolate bar/other items you’re purchasing.

7. Potluck it: Re-create your favorite Fair Trade dessert and share it at a potluck with a list of ingredients (except for that secret one!)

8. Be an ambassador. Many people haven’t heard of Fair Trade or don’t really understand what it’s about. Be an ambassador among your friends. Ask questions together and be willing to look up answers.

9. Make the switch to reusable shopping bags made from Fair Trade cotton — support cotton farmers and the environment!

10. Continue to engage in online dialogue and advocacy. At the Africa Fair Trade Convention, there was a large cry out to have stronger connections between producers in the developing world and consumers in developed countries. African producers are starting to jump on the social media bandwagon and are ready to have conversations with consumers to further tighten the value chain. The more we ‘Vancouverites’ can spread and engage in real conversations online with producers the more we can hope to create ‘digital noise’ and spread the conversations across a larger network of consumers.

11. Gift it: for those upcoming birthdays, consider a Fair Trade item like a soccer ball, a cake made of Fair Trade ingredients, textiles.

12. Get involved. Attend (local) Fair Trade meetings. Make up a list of your questions and have coffee with someone. Teach yourself! Knowledge is power and you are in control.

We Want More From Our S’mores!

Summer has arrived. I just returned from a week in Minnesota, where it’s so hot you can melt chocolate on the sidewalk!

One of my favorite memories as a child was practicing how to make the absolutely perfect s’more (marshmallow gooey but not burned, and getting it onto the graham cracker before it fell off) using a Hershey chocolate bar. But since I learned about forced child labor in the chocolate industry, it doesn’t sound very delicious anymore. Tens of thousands of children work in cocoa fields, exposed to hazardous conditions where they spray pesticides without protective gear, use sharp tools, and sustain injuries.

The GOOD news: There are lots of fair trade Kosher chocolates to choose from, and child labor is prohibited in fair trade certification. I’m looking forward to enjoying my first delicious fair trade s’more this weekend!

Hershey’s is the only chocolate company in the U.S. which is not using any fair trade cocoa beans in its products. Join Fair Trade Judaica and the Jewish community in encouraging Hershey’s to support fair trade and child labor-free chooclate.

Let us know what you’re planning to do!