Happy Fair Trade Easter

By Katie Phillips - The Body Shop - The Glen (Vic) - Store Manager

Make your Easter an even happier one this year, by buying Fair trade chocolate and Easter eggs from Oxfam shops, and other retailers that support Fair trade.

By buying Fair trade chocolate you can be sure that growers are being paid fair and stable price for their cocoa and no enslaved child or trafficked labour has been used to produce the cocoa.

Some facts that I found on the World Vision Australia web site;

• In West Africa's cocoa region, which produces 70 percent of the world's cocoa, over 284,000 children work in hazardous conditions.

• The fall in price of raw cocoa has forced small farmers in the cocoa region to cut labour costs, in order to make enough from their crops. This has been linked to the re-emergence of slave labour.

• Over 15,000 children are suspected to have been sold into forced labour on northern Ivory Coast plantations in recent years. These children – mostly under 14 – are involved in dangerous work, including spraying pesticides, using machetes and carrying heavy loads. They have no access to education or health care.

• Physical abuse is also common. "The beatings were a part of my life," said a former bonded labourer, Aly Diabate. If he fell while carrying the heavy bags of cocoa, no-one would help. "Instead, they beat you and beat you until you picked it up again."

• The situation is so serious that in 2002, an International Cocoa Initiative was launched to bring the international chocolate industry, aid agencies and corporate stakeholders together over the issue.

If companies such as The Body Shop can purchase Cocoa through Community Trade/ Fair Trade which they have done since 1996, so why cant candy makers do the same? Cadbury have started to get the ball rolling and proudly announced in March 2009 that the Dairy Milk in the UK would be going Fair trade.

This is the link to the You Tube - Cadbury Fair trade press release.

A fact that I have found interesting; 2002 -05 Financial Year The Body Shop International purchased 480 Tonnes from the Kuapa Kokoo Ltd Farmers Cooperative in Ghana which is the equivalent of 15 million bars of chocolate.

How will you purchase your Easter eggs this year? Yes fair trade often is more expensive but really how can you put a cost on a child's life! Don't purchase blind and pretend it does not exist because you cant see it.

Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living - Anita Roddick

BUY FAIR TRADE THIS EASTER!