Around the world, Stop The Traffik campaigners lobbied chocolate companies by writing letters, making phone calls, face-booking, tweeting and making choices in supermarkets by opting for traffik free chocolate.
As a response to the campaign and growing consumer awareness, change is beginning to take place. Global companies are beginning to come out from their hiding places, breaking free from the cover of the ICI and acting independently to supply traffik free chocolate. Cadbury launched fair trade Dairy Milk, Mars followed making promises for their Galaxy range and Nestlé will be supplying traffik free 4 finger Kit Kats in January 2010 with regular Kit Kats to follow.
Here at Stop The Traffik, we are delighted to see the campaign working and feel inspired that so many people have taken part. There are however important questions that remain.
Nestlé are giving us an ethical option, that fact cannot be denied. But it’s important to see that four finger Kit Kats are not the biggest selling bar, is it a token gesture? what about Aero, Milkybar, Yorkie, Rolos, Smarties, After Eight, Black Magic, Dairy Box, Quality Streets, Toffo, Heaven, Animal Bars, Lion Bar, Caramac, Walnut Whip, Toffee Crisp, Crunch Bars and Munchies (not to mention chocolate biscuits). Human rights are upheld and worth it for one bar but not the rest?
Having escaped from a plantation in Cote D’Ivoire, Viktor – a boy trafficked from Mali said ‘when the owner beat someone to the point he could not move he took him out of the plantation and we never saw that person again. When people eat chocolate, they are enjoying something I suffered to make, they are eating my flesh’.
Suddenly our comfort food is no longer comforting.
In the words of our CEO, Ruth Dearnley, "The worst thing we can do is think what the chocolate industry has done is enough! The industry needs to know that we will not stop until every bar in every shop is traffik."
Victoria Kuhr is Community Action and Resources Officer at Stop The Traffik. To find out how to get involved visit www.stopthetraffik.org
