[.ca] Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the ... (ISBN 0679313206)

Unjust Desserts!:
As an investigative report par excellence, Carol Off provides her reader with a very disturbing insight into the commercial world of big chocolate. What she finds is an industry that both exploits it workers - mainly children - betrays its producers, and de-stabilizes its host third world nations in the name of making big profits. The story is a tragic replay of what other multi-nationals have done in diamonds, sugar, coffee, and rubber. The book spends a considerable time in showing where this practice began back in the l8th century, with the opening free trade and the development of the British Empire. The latter portion of her efforts zeros in on the great political, social and economic upheveal the Big Chocolate concerns have caused in the Ivory Coast with the hiring of young children to harvest the cocoa crop. I highly recommend this book for its effective focus and level-headed reportage. Lots of useful and easily confirmable evidence to back up her claims that the Third World is paying dearly for the West's demand for cheap chocolate.

Read before you buy your next chocolate!:
We all think that fair trade, organic chocolate is better than the ordinary stuff but until you read this book, you have no idea how much blood and horror is mixed into the regular chocolate bar on the shelf. Carol Off, a Canadian journalist who has covered conflicts from Yugoslavia to Afganistan, now looks that the Ivory Coast, source of half of the world's chocolate, and a formerly proud and successful African model that has degenerated into war and child slavery. She starts with the history of chocolate, from Cortez and the Spanish who learn about it from the Aztecs and enslave them to produce it. Soon cocoa is growing in a belt within 20 kilometres of the equator around the world, a labour-intensive crop harvested and dried with slave labour. When in 1828 Coenraad Van Houten figured out how to press the cocoa butter out to make Dutch Cocoa powder, the drink as we know it became popular. Then a series of open minded and progressive men like Fry, Cadbury and Rowntree in the UK and Hershey in America built empires at home with model cities and factories, while ignoring the obvious slavery abroad. Some of the most honourable men in either country were earning their livings off cocoa and sugar, grown by slaves. Now chocolate manufacturers can say they don't know where their supply comes from; our good corporate friends Archer Daniels Midlands and Cargill act as the middlemen, buying all over the world, playing one supplier off against the other, to keep the prices low. But in 1965, the Ivory Coast dictator Felix-Houphouet-Boigne started using cocoa to turn his country into one of the success stories in Africa, building a gleaming modern capital city with wide highways and skyscrapers. After he died in 1993 the country fell apart, its neighbours in Liberia at civil war, its other neighbour Mali in a drought. Children are kidnapped and sold across the border to harvest the beans, and yet through all of this destruction and death, bags of cocoa beans keep showing up at the port. Meanwhile, across the ocean in Central America the farmers were not doing much better financially. In Belize, English organic pioneer Craig Sams was looking for new products and discovered small numbers of indigenous farmers growing cocoa the tradtional ways,with no pesticides or fertilizers. Soon he was selling Green and Black's organic Mayan Chocolate, which was an instant hit; it was the first designated Fair Trade product in the UK. And the rest is history. Fair Trade is still a miniscule portion of the market but it is growing fast. (although, sounding like LEED, the cost of certification is too high and the paperwork far too complex for most of the farmers. According to Gregor Hargrove who helps them there is not a single farmer in Belize who could figure it out.) This book is important if you care about the people who make what you eat, and if you care about justice and the treatment of children. It is not perfect- there is a section about the death of a Canadian journalist that goes on far too long, while the coverage of the development and expansion of the fair trade movement is far too short. It completely ignores the impact of farming and drying methods and other developments that would interest readers, because it much more a book about war than it is about chocolate. However I will never look at the stuff again without thinking of the blood count in it.

"When people eat chocolate . . . ":
Hardly larger than New Mexico, the Côte d'Ivoire doesn't seem an appropriate site for international economic intrigue or the focus of intense labour reform efforts. A glance at a map of Africa suggests it should be a tourist haven. A magnificent coastline, running east-west for over 500 km, faces the Gulf of Guinea, an arm of the Atlantic helping form the Bulge of Africa. Some of that shoreline has protected harbours, and most of the Ivory Coast's neighbours, such as Mali, Guinea and Ghana enjoy a large measure of political stability. The Côte d'Ivoire also enjoys an economic privilege - it produces nearly half of the world's cacao beans. Those beans are the foundation for Valentine's Day confections, cocoa and chocolate Easter bunnies. As Carol Off has shown in this captivating study, thereby hangs a tale. Cocoa beans grow best in special tropical conditions - high heat, elevated humidity, a lush overstory of trees and supportive soil. Originally from Central America where the aristocrats of the Olmec empire restricted consumption of the rich, dark compound of kakawa to themselves, chocolate is now universally enjoyed. Columbus missed the chance to introduce chocolate to Europe, but when it did arrive, it was taken up enthusiastically. Like coffee, which came from the opposite direction, cocoa became the basis for a wave of new gathering places - coffee houses - which served coffee, hot chocolate and tea. The demand for chocolate rose rapidly, driving producers to expand while cutting costs. In agriculture, the chief method of cost reduction is to slash labour costs. The major effort needed in producing cacao, which grows on tree trunks, is the harvesting - cutting, separating the seeds from pulp and spreading them to dry. Even a child can do it. A Canadian broadcast journalist, Carol Off was tipped off by Save the Children to modern Côte d'Ivoire conditions. This shouldn't have been news for several reasons. As the demand for chocolate rose and the European confectionary firms expanded, growing cacao trees and harvesting their fruit moved from small-holders' plots to extensive plantations. The needed labour was frequently coerced from local villages. The new growing conditions often depleted the plants forcing growers to new sites. Africa, already established in producing coffee, became host to a new bean. Once tainted by the earlier slave trade across the Atlantic, Africa's cacao plantations saw the re-establishment of new forced-labour practices. With political and economic power shifts restructured by European imperialists in Africa during the 19th Century, new forms of "indentured workers" or "contract labourers" arose. In the 20th Century many of those working the cocoa plantations were children of countries bordering on Côte d'Ivoire. Hearing of job opportunities hungry children left their villages to earn money. Many were never seen again. The 19th Century chocolate industry in Britain came to be dominated by Quakers. This sect, with a long history of campaigning for the abolition of slavery, grew uneasy over stories of forced labour in the plantations supplying the raw materials for such products as Cadbury's. They sent investigators to enquire about conditions. Carol Off describes the late 19th Century efforts of Henry Woodd Nevinson to reveal how workers were treated in producing cocoa beans. His reports where quietly shelved. Post-World War II fluctuations created even worse conditions, with national governments taking a fresh interest in cocoa revenues. New investigations were prompted, leading in one case to a film of child labour conditions. It was the film that immortalised one child's comment: "When people eat chocolate, they eat my flesh". Other mechanisms are available, however, as Off describes conditions in Belize as a conclusion to her book. "Fair trading", a process slowly being applied to coffee and other products, has made some headway in cocoa's Central American homeland. Although hardly a panacea, fair trade structures in growing and marketing, have helped stablise price levels and given small holders a fresh means of surviving. Small, well-controlled plots, often as family operations may provide hope for growers. However, a fair income for the cocoa farmer may mean an increase in the price of candy bars or Valentine's Day treats. Are you prepared to pay that extra to release children from bondage labour? \ostephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada\c

The hidden costs of treats:
Most of what you should know about chocolate is the topic of this captivating book. There are serious and hidden costs to this treat we consume nearly every day - sometimes in overwhelming quantities. Canadian journalist and broad caster Carol Off takes you on a journey through the cultural and political history of cocoa, this delicacy so revered since ancient times. Based on her thorough research and personal encounters in the field, she brings to light the controversies and conflicts that have accompanied the production and trade of chocolate for centuries. Of particular interest to her is the exploitation of cocoa farmers, the use of child labour and severe corruption in producing countries in the heart of Africa on the one hand and the connivance of the international marketing bodies on the other. None of what you discover here should stop you from indulging, but it should open your eyes to the complex and often violent context and encourage you to consider your purchasing choices. The theobroma plant that carries the cocoa producing bean pods originated in Central America and only grows in a narrow environmental band: it needs the right temperatures and the humidity of tropical rain forests. For more than three thousand years farmers have harvested cocoa beans from the gourds of this shrub. Initially processed into a stimulating drink made from the bitter cocoa pulp it was thought to have nutritional and health benefits. In this way it was appreciated by Aztecs, Maya and others in the Americas. It was the drink of the local elites and used in religious rituals as well as a legal tender. Spanish conquerors and European traders introduced cocoa into our world. Off provides an excellent overview of cocoa's history and its expansion from a luxury treat into an important general commodity, available to everyone in the developed world. (Most cocoa farmers cannot afford to buy or eat it!) Cocoa butter was combined with other ingredients into the familiar chocolate bar. With its rising popularity in the European and North American markets, growing areas had to be expanded and the processing industrialized. To meet the demands, the theobroma plant was introduced in West Africa with Cote d'Ivoire being the major centre. Increasingly, companies like Rowntree, Cadbury, Mars and Hershey and big players in the food business, such as Cargill, took over as the major investors and market controllers. Complicated colonial and post-colonial politics in Cote d'Ivoire, as well as international market pressures, resulted in a collapse of a sustainable and for the farmers economically viable cocoa economy. Cheap labour was in high demand for the harvest. First, farmers brought their own children and extended families into the process, but more and more young people and children were recruited from neighbouring poor countries, especially from Mali. Farmers suffering extreme poverty feel themselves being victims of big business and corrupt government systems. Off succeeds in interviewing farmers and traders and follows the routes of some of the youngsters to farms where they are kept bonded, in primitive conditions and without pay. "Big Chocolate", Off's term for the international corporations involved in the industry, have played their part in creating and maintaining the devastating conditions for the farmers and the children. Despite pressures from primarily non-governmental groups and promises to stop slave labour in the cocoa production, quietly it is still going on today. Journalists and others investigating the intricate web of exploitation and corruption have been threatened, some have disappeared. Off writes in a direct and engaging journalistic style, rich in factual detail and description of her personal experience in several countries. Part detective story, part investigative research spiced with some African storytelling, she captivates the reader from beginning to end. The author also has important messages to impart. "Big Chocolate" needs to be held accountable to their promises. They in turn can influence government policies and programs. On the brighter side, she touches on cocoa production in several countries that have managed the business with more fairness and involvement of local farmers, in particular in Belize. She also discusses the appearance and efforts around "fair trade" chocolate, that is of growing interest to consumers in developed countries. \oFriederike Knabe\c

Bitter Chocholate Bitter Chocolate; An Unsubstantiated Account of the Chocolate Industry:
I heard Carol Off on the radio several times and I ordered this book because I wanted more detailed information on what I had heard on the radio, and to check where she got her facts. I was disappointed that there were no footnotes or endnotes that could be that would allow a reader to verify the information in the book.