Hershey's Chocolate

In the UK, where consumers have the right to know what’s in their food because they’ve insisted on mandatory GMO labeling laws, Hershey’s products are GMO-free.

The company once said: “We took this decision based on our belief that customers in the UK do not currently wish to see GM ingredients in these products.”

The Hershey’s kisses and chocolate bars sold here in the U.S. are loaded with cheap genetically modified beet sugar and genetically engineered soy lecithin. And where does the giant chocolate maker get its cacao? From regions where child labor and workers’ rights abuses run rampant.

Hershey’s spent more than a half million dollars to defeat Prop 37, the California Right to Know GMO labeling law. No wonder. What about American's Right to Know?

Hershey's also makes Cadbury and the below listed confections.

Almond Joy Bars
Mounds Bars
York Peppermint Wafer Bars
Reese's Peanut Butter Wafer Bars
All Hershey's Bars, Pretzel Bars, Drops, Wafers, Miniatures, Nuggets, Kisses, Pot O' Gold
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Pieces (all flavors)
Whoppers
York Peppermint Pattie
The Whatchamacallit
Skor
Rolo
The Heath Bar
5th Avenue
Milk Duds
Mr. Goodbar
Take 5
Reese's NutRageous
Reese's Sticks

Dagoba Chocolate is the Hershey's-owned fair trade, high-quality organic chocolate purchased from the 2001 founder, Frederick Schilling in 2006. Used in Hershey products sold in the U.K.

Hershey Canada
Cherry Blossom
Rosette(s)
Oh Henry!, a candy bar containing peanuts, caramel, and fudge enrobed in chocolate, currently made in the United States by Nestle.

Non-Chocolate Candies
Breath Savers breath mints.
Bubble Yum bubble gum brand.
Ice Breakers chewing gum and mints.
Jolly Rancher hard & soft fruit candy, lollipops, and flavored soda.
PayDay candy bar Twizzlers licorice brand.
Zagnut candy bar, consisting of toasted coconut and peanut butter.
ZERO candy bar
Hershey's cookies and cream is a bar made of vegetable oil-based white confection with added chocolate wafer bits (similar to Oreo cookies).

Others (too numerous to name)
CareFree sugarless gum.
Chipits
Good & Plenty, white and purplish-red pill shaped licorice candies.
Mike And Ike candy
Twizzlers

http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/50865/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=9504

 

And it is within your rights to refuse to purchase and consume them, just as its within my rights to do so.

 

And Hershey, PA. is a shining example of the great things corporate America can do for our towns and society.

 

Five years ago they reduced their US operations by one third and fired 10 percent of their employees while relocating to Mexico because labor was cheaper. Canadian operations also shut down.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/hersheys.asp

Oh but I love the Cadbury Creme Eggs!

 

Did you mean to say it's within your right to "purchase and consume them" as it is my right to "refuse to purchase and consume them?"

The intent of the post was to question their duplicity producing non-gmo chocolates for distribution and sale in the U.K. but not for American consumption.

 

What's wrong with beet sugar and soy lecithin?

 

Nevermind - I did some Googling and read about the controversy.

 

I love Hersheys chocolate best so whatever they are doing, they are pleasing me.

 

Let's see....huge employment for the area (even with 10% reduction). Beautifully maintained town/streets/parks, sports facility, medical facilities far better than a town that size could ever otherwise hope to have, etc.
They had the opportunity to sell the company several years ago for a huge profit. There were huge protests from the community not to sell. And they didn't.

 

My favorite way to eat a Hershey bar is to hold half a bars worth against the roof of my mouth until it melts and mixes with my drool that I can't contain it all and it begins to drip from the corner of my mouth as it finally becomes completely liquified and I can drink it down and ignore my wife as she calls me a gluttonous sloth.

 

It's also the only chocolate worth using for s'mores

 

Maybe a chocolate company wasn't the best example - people love it too much! How about a GMO brussels sprouts company?

 

Must be cacao's mood elevating chemicals that makes people defensive about their chocolate.

So the fact that they knowingly obtained cocoa harvested by child labor has no bearing on their reputation? See below.

Hersheys sued for info on use of child labor in cocoa supplies
Nov 1 (Reuters) - The Hershey Co should turn over records that could reveal the leading U.S. chocolate maker violated federal child trafficking laws by using cocoa from West Africa, according to a lawsuit filed by a public pension fund.

The lawsuit by the Louisiana Municipal Police Employees' Retirement System, a Hershey shareholder, seeks documents which could determine if the candymaker knew its suppliers in Ghana and Ivory Coast used child labor.

"By producing chocolate at its Pennsylvania factory that is the product of child and forced labor in West Africa, Hershey has flouted domestic and foreign law and placed at risk its century old brand and reputation," said the complaint.

The lawsuit was filed in the Court of Chancery in Delaware, where the Hershey, Pennsylvania-based company is incorporated.

Hershey said in October it was committed to ensuring that all of its cocoa by 2020 will come from suppliers that meet international labor standards.

"We have been involved in on-the-ground programs, working with public and private partners, to help eliminate inappropriate labor practices in cocoa communities," said a statement from Hershey on Thursday. Jeff Beckman, a company spokesman, declined to comment on the lawsuit.

A 2011 study by Tulane University found that 1.8 million children in the Ivory Coast and Ghana work in the cocoa industry and that the vast majority of them are unpaid. The study also found evidence of child-trafficking, forced labor and other violations of internationally accepted labor practices.

If the court forces Hershey to turn over the documents, the pension fund could look for evidence to bring a lawsuit against the company and its directors. With evidence, the fund said it could claim Hershey violated anti-trafficking laws and knowingly benefited from a supplier using child labor.

The directors could be sued for not properly overseeing the business and they could be held liable for damage caused to the company's reputation.

In October, high-end grocer Whole Foods Markets Inc dropped Hershey's artisan chocolate brand Scharffen Berger after pressure from activists who sought to put the spotlight on child labor in chocolate production.


http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/01/hershey-childlabor-idUSL1E8M1GSB20121101

 

The article that you posted clearly states that it has not been determined if Hershey knew about the child labor issues.

 

Don't let facts get in the way of an agenda, Cliff.

 

American kids have it too easy these days. Let's do an exchange program and let the suburban kids harvest their own cacao.

But seriously, Hershey reportedly is trying to do something about this apparently much larger issue within the industry, although apparently not as much as some companies:

http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2012/10/18/child-labor-concerns-hershey-supply-chain

After child labor issues with Nike and other larger corporations, hopefully the practice will decrease soon.

 

What do the countries producing the cocoa do about the issue?

 

Of course Hersheys had knowledge...

While we enjoy the sweet taste of chocolate, the reality is strikingly different for African children.

In 2001 consumers around the world were outraged to discover that child labor and slavery, trafficking, and other abuses existed on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast, a country that produces nearly half the world’s cocoa. An avalanche of negative publicity and consumer demands for answers and solutions soon followed.

Two members of US Congress, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa and Representative Eliot Engel of New York, tackled the issue by adding a rider to an agricultural bill proposing a federal system to certify and label chocolate products as slave free.

The measure passed the House of Representatives and created a potential disaster for Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland Mars, Hershey’s, Nestle, Barry Callebaut, Saf-Cacao and other chocolate manufacturers. To avoid legislation that would have forced chocolate companies to label their products with “no child labor” labels (for which many major chocolate manufacturers wouldn’t qualify), the industry fought back and finally agreed to a voluntary protocol to end abusive and forced child labor on cocoa farms by 2005.

The chocolate industry fought back. Ultimately, a compromise was reached to end child labor on Ivory Coast cocoa farms by 2005. In 2005 the cocoa industry failed to comply with the protocol’s terms, and a new deadline for 2008 was established. In 2008 the terms of the protocol were still not met, and yet another deadline for 2010 was set.

Almost a decade after the chocolate companies, concerned governments and specially foundations spent millions of dollars in an effort to eradicate child labor and trafficking in the international cocoa trade, has anything changed?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbpaBbxsJSI

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/dark-side-chocolate/

You can access the full length documentary on YouTube.

 

I suppose thre children could have starved instead of working. That's better right?