We need to recognize that we are not always silent bystanders, that we are responsible for the enslavement of innocent people from around the world, and that we as a people must be watchful and responsible of ourselves and each other.

I will tell you this. I felt that both responses were lacking in substance and did not address my questions directly. As a result, Cadbury and Nestle are either no longer going to be appearing in our house, or if they do appear, it will be infrequently. Both will lose business as a result of your post.

Having said that, I would like to find a more comprehensive essay about this situation because I have a feeling it’s complex from these companies’ perspectives as well.

Thank you for contacting us regarding Cadbury in the United States.

Cadbury Canada is only authorized to distribute or sell to registered wholesale
and retail customers in Canada. This is in compliance with our contract with
Cadbury United Kingdom. In the United States, Hershey manufactures Cadbury
products

Described below are some of the key initiatives undertaken by Cadbury Schweppes,
our parent company regarding cocoa farming and harvesting:

¿We are working with all stakeholders involved in the production of chocolate –
from bean to chocolate bar – to boost the economic livelihood of cocoa farmers
and workers and ensure that cocoa is grown in a sustainable and ethical way.
Working with governments and other international organizations, we have programs
underway throughout West Africa to:

– Help farmers collectively market their produce – resulting in 15-20%
increases in producer prices for those involved in the program.

– Help cocoa farmers create a sustainable, biologically diverse agricultural
system to generate better yields, more consistent crops and respect the
environment.

– Implement responsible pest and disease management.

– Invest in social infrastructure, for example building water wells.

– Promote ethical working practices with a time bound program to certify that
cocoa is grown and harvested under internationally acceptable conditions with
regard to the use of labor of all ages.

These are complex issues and it will take time before the real results can be
seen. However, Cadbury Schweppes has a long heritage of supporting cocoa farmers
and a strong ethical foundation that has and continues to guide all aspects of
our business. We continue to be committed to the achievement of these goals. ¿

For full information, we encourage you log on to their website, at
Cadburyschweppes.com.

Best regards,

Consumer Relations

Funny how the charity I have chosen works in Israel, but you know me and my white mans guilt, radical leftist views and “politicized notion of what constitutes tzedakah and chesed,” apparently better than I do.

And remember, the phrase is not “tikkun yisrael” it’s “tikkun olam.” Think about that before you go needlessly bashing someone for simply mentioning our potential responsibilities to any other part of the olam next time.

I am involved in Tikkun Olam here in Israel, which is my primary responsibility. I support organizations I know and trust here, on a variety of issues.

If you think that this local activity is somehow less worthy than puffed-up global tokenism – you have again proven my point: you have a highly politicized notion of what constitutes tzedakah and chesed.

… and I came up with a host of radical left-wing sites. And the more serious of those sites grudgingly agreed that since the passage of laws in Congress and the establishment of the trade group, there has been improvement.

I also checked out the trade group linked to in the Nestle letter. It has UNICEF and a host of major NGOs involved, and detailed exactly the sort of programs I described – giving farmers the technological edge that will let fewer people bring in the same harvest, and supporting migrant worker families with stipends so the kids go to school.

Your broadside dismissal of Nestle because “they have plants in Africa and therefore know what’s going on” reveals your OWN prejudice Laya – maybe they are more effective in implementing the protocols because they are there? The fact is that there has been improvement, and the WCF is clearly not a resource-less industry fig-leaf.

You talk about how I dump people into boxes – yet this is just what the radicals on which you base your own righteous stance do.

Can your worldview handle the actual facts that contradict the It’s-Always-The-West’s-Fault ideology?

Laya:
…what you can do for tikkun olam…
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -
Sometimes that means going beyond simple breast-beating self-righteousness.

For example: Welfare reform was Tikkun Olam – even though “progressives” and “humanists” jumped up and down decrying the “human suffering” that would be caused.

We all know what really happened. The tough-love insistence that people who could support themselves *should* support themselves had a salutary effect on most of the ex-welfare recipients. There has been very little relapse into dependancy.

Left-liberal ideology sees everything in terms of the exploited and the exploiters, the oppressors and the oppressed. But there’s an inherent, bitter hook in that world view that often goes unnoticed by good-hearted people: many of the people who present themselves as defenders of the poor and downtrodden really have a strong investment in MAINTAINING the victimized status of the downtrodden, rather than empowering them – it is their way to muster and consolidate political power.

Thus Hillary Clinton tells a black audience that Congress is “a plantation” 20 years after Reagan’s reforms sparked the growth of a solid black middle class, and after blacks have served in the highest levels of the Republican White House for years.

Because those who present themselves as champions of the downtrodden have a vested interest in maintaining the perception that the “oppressed” need them to look out for them.

Besides the obvious soft chauvinism and condescension in that pose, it allows the liberal “champions” to wield political power, and to accrue to themselves economic power (“we must have higher tax rates to redistribute income more *equitably* etc.”).

This is why no Democrats are talking bluntly to blacks about their own contribution to the problems in their communities.

This is also why the Democrats are furiously courting illegal aliens, trying to convince Latino Americans that they are another “oppressed minority group”.

Not to help them. To use them – politically, and emotionally: to make themselves feel righteous and virtuous.

It also explains the ease with which the taps of pity and mercy are shut off when the situation offers no ideological payoff – Darfur, Muslim treatment of women and gays, the Palestinians.

I don’t assume you follow this agenda – my reading of the situation is that you are like many sincere young laypeople raised in the stifling bosom of PC indoctrination, who have not yet learned to parse these inherent contradictions and manipulations.

But a review of the websites hyping the Chocolate Slavery story, the rhetoric used to hype it – and the ease with which a rather impressive deployment of government and NGO resources is dismissed as inadequate – all of these indicate an ideologically motivated filtering of the facts to conform to the We-Are-The-World, It’s-All-Our-Fault scenario.

Sorry Laya – Tikkun Olam is not always the same thing as feeling righteously guilty.

Nor is all virtuous denunciation of the West a blow for “social justice”.

Did you look at the WCF website? Read the interim reports? See the list of agencies that are pitching in?

Or is all that irrelevant because we already have our ideologically motivated “truth” in hand?

Yes, responsibility does lie largely in Africa, however anyone who is a net beneficiary is not blameless. Because I am not simply pointing fingers, but rather saying “what small thing can I do” you seem to have me pegged for a bleeding heart armchair liberal.

I know that if we all fit nicely into the boxes you have carved out in your head to categorize people, the world would be a simpler place for you and you could write things like this off.

However, your projections are wrong and you are being quite reactionary to anything that even smells leftist. Whereas I say it is my responsibility as a Jew, and doubly so as a religious one, to do the small things that I can from where I can, you seem to say “I’m not doing it, because it reminds me of the platform of people I don’t agree with”

In any case, enjoy your chocolate, your freedom, and your right to not address the issue of what you can do for tikkun olam, just because on the ground it’s black people oppressing black people.

Embracing simplistic pollyanna-ish notions of guilt and largely symbolic gestures of protest could also be interpreted as “letting oneself off the hook”.

The bottom line is that none of the multinationals conspired to create the situation – as opposed to the nefarious history of the banana trade in the Americas, where a cartel was actively encouraged.

So yes, the responsibility DOES lie largely with the Africans who are doing this to each other. The inability to admit and address that is a tip-off to me that this issue has been run through the left-liberal gender-class-ethnicity slicer-dicer, and a static definition of Oppressed and Oppressor has been generated, largely along ideological lines.

It cannot escape a politically aware person’s notice that the folks who are framing this issue – and insisting that the bad, bad, West must Do Something for These Poor Unfortunates – are the same people who spout multi-culti slogans about how awful it is to judge another society’s value systems when it suits their West-bashing program.

I’m sure laypeople like you are sincere, but many of the movers and shakers in the “progressive” movement are suspiciously selective in their application of their “humanism” – something that needn’t be explained in detail to a supporter of Israel, I hope…

Unquestioningly quoting these politically motivated sources makes me wonder about the accuracy of the information, and the slant that’s been given. That’s all I’m saying.

And not being able to address the African contribution to the problem is even more evidence that there is an ideological slant at work.

Regarding aid to update African agriculture: you sidestepped my point, turing to a sweeping generalization about mechanization of an entire continent. Nice try – but we all know that billions are already being poured into Africa, and much of that money is already going into rural development programs (Israel in fact has taken a major role introducing its drip-irrigation technology to arid regions of sub-Saharan Africa). Targeting the cocoa industry – or making aid conditional on good governance – are both eminently practical ways to clean up the African side of the tragedy.

But first you have to be willing to see past leftie platitudes and admit that the oppressors – in the most direct sense of the word – are Africans in this case. And their behavior must be judged, and changed.

It takes more political will and involvement to lobby for changes to aid policies than it does to fire off a whiney, self-righteous letter to Nestle.

So who’s letting themselves off easy?

For further resources on where to find alternative, ethically sourced foods, check out these links from TransFair USA.

Sure, slavery may arguably be “inefficient”, but it generates a lot of money- it’s the second most lucrative illegal enterprise in the world, just after arms and above illegal narcotics. In fact The United States State Department estimates that within the next ten years it will overtake even th arms trade in this respect.

Overhead is low, and business is good. Humanity is not the concern as long at as it doesn’t have to be. I mean, why pay workers when you can make them work for free? Who needs benefits, overtime, vacation pay, unions etc.? What sense does that make in a profit driven world?

Mechanizing all African enterprises is a lovely, if slightly naive idea that doesn’t really solve the problem. I also don’t know where you think this instant and endless aid would suddenly appear from.

Your analysis of my white man’s guilt is off by a long shot. But I do believe global responsibility and everyone doing the little they can do to tikkun olam – last time I checked “Olam” also included Africa. But feel free to let yourself off the hook, I guess that’s your prerogative.

RE: that response from Nestle – Nestle has been repeatedly cited as one of the worst offenders, as they have factories on the ground in the Ivory Coast whereas otter companies like Hershey’s buys it from a middle man. Nestle knows exactly what is going on, and I really don’t buy the whole it’s just honest hard working farmers and their kids shtick, as it flies in the face of every other report I could find on it. Just do a google search for Chocolate slavery.

You lost me here in other words, their amoral/immoral view of their fellow Africans – as judged by Jewish eyes and Jewish notions of human dignity.
Jewish notions of dignity are not relativism. They are truths, and they are holy.

There is nothing stopping any of these nations from mechanizing their cocoa production – there is oodles of aid and technology-transfer available.

Such a move would allow more humane policy while remaining cost-competitive – slavery is, in fact, a very inefficient method of production, and with overseas aid covering the capital investment and startup costs, it would be very easy to get a competitive advantage while modernizing one’s agricultural sector.

We all know why this is not happening – and it’s not because of greedy Belgian chocolatiers.

Its because of African corruption, tribal infighting, and a host of choice flowing from these people’s very different value systems – in other words, their amoral/immoral view of their fellow Africans – as judged by Jewish eyes and Jewish notions of human dignity.

The dodge of blaming the “industrial-commercial interests” is simplistic, and makes me suspect how much of this story has been slanted to fit the left-wing catechism in which every 3rd worlder is a noble savage, and every European a rapacious oppressor.

The series has been good until now – but you lost me on this one.

“April 18, 2006

Dear Nestlé Consumer,

Thank you for contacting us about fair trade products. Like you and supporters of “Fair Trade Cocoa”, we believe that cocoa farmers should receive a fair return for their cocoa crops and that crops should be grown responsibly, without abusive labor practices.

Nestlé, along with other candy companies, belong to the U.S. Chocolate Manufacturers Association (CMA), the World Cocoa Foundation and the American Cocoa Research Institute. Through these organizations, assistance and education are provided to farmers and farm-based communities in developing countries to improve their livelihoods through a sustainable, biologically diverse agricultural system with the goal of providing lasting positive economic, social and environmental benefits.

When concerns were raised about children working on cocoa farms, an independent, US government-funded survey of thousands of cocoa farms was conducted in 2002. The survey found that the vast majority of the one million-plus cocoa farms in West Africa are small, family-owned farms operated by honest, hard-working families whose children work on the farm in an appropriate role as members of the family. The industry is working with governments, labor experts and international organizations to ensure that cocoa is grown responsibly.

Finally, Nestlé has actively participated in the industry’s efforts to address the issue through actions outlined in the Harkin-Engel Protocol—a series of steps aimed at eliminating the worst forms of child labor from cocoa growing in West Africa.

To find out more please visit the World Cocoa Foundation website at worldcocoafoun....

We look forward to serving you in the future.

Sincerely,
Consumer Response Representative”

As Jews worldwide observe Passover, the Festival of Freedom, it was brought to my attention the evils of slavery that still persist in the world. Children and others are caught in a web of slavery on cocoa plantations in Africa and elsewhere.

I have since learned that Nestle promised to make their product slave-free by 2005, and have not done so.

Please heed the call of freedom. Stop purchasing cocoa from plantations that exploit and enslave children. Invest in sustainable cocoa industries that heal not destroy lives. Urge competitors to abide by anti-slavery commitments.

I will inform all my congregants, thousands of people that read my websites and listen to my classes to avoid buying your products until Nestle takes action that is independently verified.

We must act now to stop suffering and make the world a better place.

Sincerely

Rabbi Yonah Bookstein