Know Which Chocolate Can Be Good for People and Planet

Which chocolates have been checked for child labor, modern slavery and destruction of the environment. The Annual Chocolate Scorecard helps consumers know.

AMSTERDAM, NEDERLANDS , March 28, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ -- Embargoed until
● Australia, Tuesday, 28 March 2023 at 6:00:00 am AEDT
● Europe, Monday, 27 March 2023 at 9:00:00 pm CEST
● United Kingdom, Monday, 27 March 2023 at 8:00:00 pm BST
● Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, Monday, 27 March 2023 at 7:00:00 pm GMT
● USA East Coast, Monday, 27 March 2023 at 3:00:00 pm EDT
● USA West Coast, Monday, 27 March 2023 at 12:00:00 noon PDT
● Japan, Tuesday, 28 March 2023 at 4:00:00 am JST

Chocolate Scorecard
The annual Chocolate Scorecard is the biggest survey of its kind and rates the sourcing policies and practices of 56 of the world’s largest chocolate companies, including traders, processors and manufacturers.

These account for 95% of global chocolate products, Easter eggs among them, and include giants such as Mars, Lindt, Nestlé, Mondelēz (Cadbury), Ferrero and Hershey.

The Scorecard rates companies from leaders to lackers across six areas: traceability and transparency; living income; child and slavery; deforestation; agroforestry; and agrichemical management.

The Chocolate Scorecard is a collective project of 37 NGO’s, 25 subject matter experts and three Universities.

The two companies awarded the ‘Good Egg’ are both Dutch, but that is where the similarity ends. Original Beans is awarded for their ‘regenerative’ approach to growing and making chocolate. They produce high quality pure dark chocolates and each product comes with a net-positive footprint.

Tony’s Chocolonely is awarded for seeking to bring structural change to the entire cocoa sector through collaboration. Their motto is “Crazy about chocolate, serious about people”. They seek to work with the chocolate industry to make chocolate 100% ‘slave-free’.

Some key insights from the Chocolate Scorecard include:

Traceability and Transparency
• Sustainability claims of chocolate companies cannot necessarily be trusted.
• Only 11% of chocolate companies can fully trace where their cocoa comes.

Sustainability claims can too often, only refer to their own programs, which may just do farmer training rather than the living conditions of cocoa farmers.

Only 11% of the chocolate companies that participated in the Chocolate Scorecard have traced their cocoa to its origin. Further, on average 50% of cocoa is purchased indirectly, meaning they doen’t know where it came from.

Living Income for Farmers
• Farmers need to be earning a living income from their work
• A living income is the net annual income that a household needs in order to afford a decent standard of living. Elements of a decent standard of living include food, water, housing, education, healthcare, transportation, clothing, and other essential needs including provisions for unexpected events.

Around half of the companies participating claim to have calculated or adopted a ‘living income reference price.’ This is the price a farmer needs to get for their cocoa.

This shows that many companies know what the reference price should be , but are not paying it for a significant share of their cocoa purchased.

Child and Forced Labor
• 1.3 million cocoa growing households were included in programs to monitor and remediate those in child labor (called Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Schemes).
• These numbers suggest that perhaps as few as 7% of children in worst forms of child labor are being identified, and even fewer helped by company programs

Within these households, 110,000 cases of worst forms of child labor were identified in the past year, and fortunately, 30% of these children are no longer in the worst forms of child labor thanks to remediation schemes. However, the figures of children identified are vastly different from the approximately 1.4 million children estimated to be in conditions of worst forms of child labor by a US Department of Labor report.

Deforestation and Climate Change
● Cocoa is a major global driver of forest destruction.
● West Africa produces three-quarters the world’s cocoa, with Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana being the largest producers.
● Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana have lost most of their forest cover in the past sixty years - around 94% and 80% respectively, with approximately one third is for cocoa growing.

It is encouraging to see that 91% of companies have a no-deforestation policy. They are needing to be strengtherned. Only half have a policy which includes improvement plans for suppliers. 60% use a deforestation monitor system but only 30% use the best practice satellite systems.

Agroforestry
• In late 2017, the governments of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire each signed a Cocoa and Forests Initiative “Joint Framework for Action.”
• The Chocolate Scorecard revealed a massive uptake in agroforestry systems
Despite this increase the global transition from monocropping cocoa to diverse agroforestry systems has a long way to go. A suite of conceptual and operational issues need to be addressed to mainstream agroforestry. Defining agroforestry is key to the desired outcomes.
Agrichemical Management
• 25% of children are in the vicinity of farm during pesticide spraying
• 18% are directly involved in working with chemicals

To address this concerning issue, we asked companies if they have a policy to monitor, reduce or eliminate the exposure of children to pesticides. Shockingly, only 62% of the companies said yes.

END

The Chocolate Scorecard and further analysis is available at https://www.chocolatescorecard.com after the embargo is lifted.

Media Contacts
• Australia - Fuzz Kitto (Australian Eastern Time AEDT) +61 (0) 407 931 115 fuzz.kitto@beslaveryfree.com (English)
• United Kingdom - Carole Mitchell (UK Time BST) +44 (0)7917 105000 carole@mightyearth.org (English) or Dominic Murphy (UK Time, BST) +44 (0)7943 498239 d.murphy@unseenuk.org (English)
• Europe - Ruben Bergsma (Central European Time CEST) +31 6 1415 5731 ruben.bergsma@choclolatescorecard.com (Dutch, English)
• West Africa = Amadou Dahou (West Africa Time, GMT) +(225) 0707108888 adahou225@gmail.com (French)Sam Mawutor West Africa Time, GMT) +233 2462 2517 sam.mawutor@chocolatescorecard.com
• United States - Etelle Higonnet (USA Eastern Time EDT), +1 202 848 7792. etelle.higonnet@gmail.com (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German)
• Japan - Roger Smith (Japan Standard Time JST) roger@mightyearth.org (English, Japanese), or Hajime Enomoto (Japan Standard Time JST), info@jatan.org (Japanese)

To download high resolution photographs please go to https://www.chocolatescorecard.com/media

Fuzz Kitto
Be Slavery Free / Chocolate Scorecard
407931115398
fuzz.kitto@beslaveryfree.com
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