Hershey Highway Leads To Child Labor

Lee Klein May 20, 2010 7:35AM

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This past Tuesday was declared I Love Reese's Day by Hershey's -- the makers of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (which reminds me: more news forthcoming soon on Short Order's I Love Short Order Day). The groups Global Exchange, Green America Today, Oasis USA, and The International Labor Rights Forum didn't take part in the Reese parade, instead using the occasion to highlight Hershey's practice of sourcing chocolate from western Africa -- where some of the poorest cocoa plantations are plagued with forced and child labor (last fall, the US Department of Labor included cocoa from Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea and Nigeria on a list of goods produced via unsavory labor practices).

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For a corporate responsibility profile of Hershey's, visit Green America's Responsible Shopper Program. After reading it, you may want to satisfy your cocoa crave with a Fair Trade Chocolate bar. If so, go to this list of fair trade retailers.

Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are overrated anyway. I find that using a superior chocolate bar to scoop freshly ground, relatively soft peanut butter from the wide-mouth plastic pint container it comes in is an infinitely more rewarding means of combining these two flavors. That my wife thinks this is itself an unsavory practice is besides the point.\

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