posted March 11, 2006 02:31 PM            

The standard price is 300 yen (£1.50) for a single piece; the most expensive chocolates, containing foie gras, sell for 1,000 yen each. Prices such as these do not seem to blunt the appetite of Japanese shoppers, the most fanatical chocoholics outside Europe and America.

But now a shadow is looming over the worldwide chocolate industry — the threat of a worldwide shortage of cocoa beans, caused by a sudden epidemic of chocomania in Asia.

With chocolate consumption increasing at a rate of 25 per cent a year in the Asia-Pacific region, and 30 per cent in China, chocolate makers fear that coco- bean growers will not be able to keep up with demand. The unstoppable growth of China has aroused fears of future conflicts over natural resources such as oil, gas and water. Now a new and unforeseen catastrophe presents itself: global chocolate wars.

“It always seems to be the same with China,” says Yoshiko Ishihara, a 56-year-old housewife, who emerges from Isetan bearing a jar of deluxe chocolate spread for her husband. “They consume so much. Fish and oil are becoming scarce. But it’s hard to believe that one day I won’t be able to eat chocolate.”

The first chocolate in Japan was brought by Dutch sailors who gave it to prostitutes in Nagasaki in 1797. A century later the Morinaga confectionery company was selling chocolate at prices that few but foreigners could afford. By 2004, the average Japanese was eating 2.2kg (5lb) a year.

Compared with the British (9.2kg a year) or the world leaders, the Swiss (11.3kg a year), the Japanese have a long way to go. Annual consumption in China is smaller still at 50g a year, but its population of 1.3 billion, and its rapidly expanding urban middle class, make it the market of the future.

“Chocolate is still very expensive for Chinese,” says Fumio Sukegawa, of the Chocolate and Cocoa Association of Japan. “But even just 1 per cent of China is 13 million people, which is about the size of Tokyo. That’s why chocolate producers are concerned.”

Already chocolatiers are being paid the ultimate compliment in China — fake versions of their most famous brands. In January, Ferrero Rocher successfully sued a Chinese confectioner that had been producing rip-offs.

Cocoa beans grow in a narrow equatorial strip from South America through Africa to Malaysia. It takes five years for a tree to mature, which makes it difficult for growers to react quickly to spikes in demand.

Japan’s peak chocolate season is Valentine’s Day, when women give chocolate to boyfriends, husbands and male colleagues. But the confectioners have also been shrewd enough to establish a second sweetie festival next Tuesday, White Day, when men reciprocate with white chocolate, white cakes or white marshmallows.

The future of chocolate all depends on one thing — the degree to which the Chinese reject their traditional sweets. In Japan, chocolate is still outsold by wagashi, sweets made out of rice, beans and sesame.

A TASTE FOR THE EXOTIC

The Japanese chocolate market is prone to changing trends. 3,000 new brands are launched each year, of which 2,960 are failures

In 2002, a 10ft chocolate statue of David Beckham was crafted out of 3,000 bars in Tokyo, to promote the Meiji chocolate brand

In the early 1990s chocolate consumption was boosted by a craze for tiramisu, following a feature about the dessert in Hanako, a fashionable magazine

In an advertisement for the benefits of cocoa in 1998, Mr Takeuchi, aged 101 and still chairman of Daito Cacao, went on television to promote longevity through cocoa

Last month, a chocolate sculpture of the score of Mozart’s Türkischer March was created and studded with 107 diamonds, to celebrate the composer’s 250th birthday

posted March 11, 2006 03:43 PM              

------------------
I want to turn the whole thing upside down
I'll find the things they say just can't be found
I'll share this love I find with everyone
We'll sing and dance to Mother Nature's songs

posted March 11, 2006 06:52 PM              

By Kate McMahon, WireTap. Posted October 28, 2005.

This Halloween, know where your chocolate comes from. Here's your guide to ensuring that your treats weren't produced by enslaved children.

On Halloween night, kids across the neighborhood can be heard howling with delight. Veins spiked with sugar and goody bags overflowing with Peanut Butter Cups and Hershey's bars propel tiny devils, ghouls and goblins from door to door.

Beyond the grinning jack-o-lanterns and just past the haunted house, the true horror of Halloween may be buried beneath the clever disguise of the seemingly sweet candy makers. This July, major chocolate producers such as Mars, Hershey's and Nestle revealed that they were more about tricks than treats.

The truth behind the chocolate is anything but sweet. On the Ivory Coast of Africa, the origin of nearly half of the world's cocoa, hundreds of thousands of children work or are enslaved on cocoa farms. With poverty running rampant and average cocoa revenues ranging from $30-$108 per household member per year, producers have no choice but to utilize child labor for dangerous farming tasks. Some children, seeking to help their poor families, even end up as slaves on cocoa farms far from home. Slavery drags on and we are paying the slaveholder's wages.

In 2001, following an avalanche of negative publicity, the major chocolate companies agreed to a voluntary protocol to eliminate child labor on West African farms rather than face binding legislation from Congress that would have required them to label their products "slave free" -- a label none of the major chocolate companies would have qualified for.

But rather than accept responsibility for the low world cocoa prices which lay at the heart of the problem, the major chocolate manufacturers placed the blame on poor farmers for allowing their children to work, and adopted a plan which even if properly implemented would leave farmers without the income they needed to feed their families and keep their children in school. Under this plan -- to be monitored by the chocolate companies themselves -- consumers would also be denied any independent guarantee that child labor abuses were no longer occurring on West African farms.

When July rolled around, producers had failed to meet their deadline. After four years passed without follow-through on a protocol that they had created, chocolate companies wanted four more years to reach a lesser goal. Instead of eliminating child labor on cocoa farms, they promised to reduce child labor by 50 percent in two West African countries by 2008, and these companies continue to deny not only responsibility for conditions on the farms which supply their cocoa, but to deny producers the only aspect of the production process they most certainly can control -- a fair price. To put it simply, chocolate companies care more about profits than the fact that slaves are producing our chocolate.

Approximately 286,000 children between the ages of nine and twelve have been reported to work on cocoa farms on the Ivory Coast alone with as many as 12,000 likely to have arrived in their situation as a result of child trafficking. These children are often at risk of injury from machetes and exposure to harmful pesticides. With world cocoa prices so low, many farmers maintain their labor force through trafficking; West African parents living in poverty often sell their kids to cocoa farmers for $50-$100 in hopes that the children will make some money on their own.

Sadly, although these children work 80 to 100 hours per week, children working on cocoa farms frequently make little or no money and are regularly beaten, starved, and exhausted. Most of these children will never even taste the final product that results from their suffering.

How can consumers tell whether or not the products they consume are produced by slaves? The $13 billion dollar chocolate industry is dominated by two firms: Hershey's and M&M's/Mars. Both of these companies use mostly Ivory Coast cocoa; their products are almost certainly produced partly by slaves.

Although these companies have publicly condemned and expressed outrage at the use of child slavery, they admit their ongoing purchase of Ivory Coast cocoa.

Another major player in the cocoa industry is Nestle. Nestle recently made waves in the U.K. by introducing the first line of fair trade coffee from a major roaster in that country. But their continued refusal to extend a fair price to cocoa farmers and their children underlines the shallowness of their commitment.

As one of the largest chocolate manufacturers in the world and the third largest buyer of cocoa from the Ivory Coast, Nestle bears responsible for eliminating slave and child labor from the chocolate production processes. With processing, storage and export facilities throughout the Ivory Coast, Nestle is well aware of the tragically unjust labor practices taking place on the farms with which it continues to do business. The enormity of Nestle's profits (over $65 billion in annual sales) and its leveraged position in the food industry underline the company's culpability and capability to ensure a fair wage and fair labor practices.

Mars, Hershey's and Nestle argue that it would be impossible for them to control the labor practices of their suppliers, but a number of other large corporations have exemplified this possibility. These companies include Clif Bar, Cloud Nine, Dagoba Organic Chocolate, Denman Island Chocolate, Divine, Gardners Candies, Green and Black's, Kailua Candy Company, Koppers Chocolate, L.A. Burdick Chocolates, Montezuma's Chocolates, Newman's Own Organics, Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company, Rapunzel Pure Organics and The Endangered Species Chocolate Company.

The Ivory Coast does not currently produce any organic cocoa, so organic chocolates are unlikely to be tainted by slavery. A solution to the problem of child labor and slavery in cocoa production is on the rise; fair trade chocolate ensures that farmers receive a fair price for their product and that their labor force is not comprised of children or slaves.

Unlike free trade, fair trade is designed to provide fair exchanges with farmers and artisans. Fair trade ensures better lives by providing suppliers with enough money for health care, education for their children, and sustainable production methods. The major obstacle to a successful fair trade market is a lack of consumer demand. Fair trade chocolate (Fair Trade Certified and Fair Trade Federation labels) is now available at grocery stores and online, along with other Fair Trade products ranging from coffee to sneakers.

As consumers,our purchasing power can push major corporations to abolish child slavery; we can change the lives of children in West Africa beginning with something as simple as the type of chocolate we buy.

This Halloween, over five hundred households across the country will be offering fair trade Halloween treats. In addition, schools, churches and individuals will be calling and writing in to Nestle to demand a commitment to fair trade and an end to child slavery.

Don't take candy from strangers. Know where your chocolate comes from and ensure that it was produced in a fair way for a fair price. Start by buying fair trade Halloween candy this month.

Kate McMahon is an intern at Global Exchange.

To order your own Fair Trade Halloween candy and learn more about the national effort to ensure sweatshop-free goods and services, visit www.globalexchange.org.

To end producer poverty and child labor on cocoa farms, call Nestle CEO Joe Weller at 1-800-225-2270 on October 31st and demand fair trade.

You can also send a handwritten letter to: Nestle USA, Joe Weller, Chairman and CEO, 800 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale, CA 91203.
http://www.alternet.org/wiretap/27500/

posted March 11, 2006 06:55 PM              

and get a monopoly on both, and flood the asian market.....

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I want to turn the whole thing upside down
I'll find the things they say just can't be found
I'll share this love I find with everyone
We'll sing and dance to Mother Nature's songs

posted March 11, 2006 10:18 PM              

quote:

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Dagoba Organic Chocolate

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posted March 11, 2006 10:31 PM              

The Nestle Boycott

Why
In order to sell more of its infant formula in third world countries, Nestle would hire women with no special training and dress them up as nurses to give out free samples of Nestle formula. The free samples lasted long enough for the mother's breast milk to dry up from lack of use. Then mothers would be forced to purchase the formula but, being poor, they would often mix the formula with unsanitary water or 'stretch' the amount of formula by diluting it with more water than recommended. The result was that babies starved all over the Third World while Nestle made huge profits from this predatory marketing strategy.

Then
In 1977, a world-wide boycott was launched against the Nestle Corporation, which was found to be the most unethical of the several companies selling baby formula at the time. Consumers all across the world stopped purchasing Nestle products. The World Health Organization drafted the International Code on the Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes, which was signed by much of the world in the early '80's and finally by the United States in 1994.

Now
After a brief hiatus the Nestle boycott was relaunched in 1988 and continues to this day. A recent report called "Cracking the Code" outlines the many present-day violations of the W.H.O. code. This report is available from UNICEF.

Presently, the International boycott of Nestle products covers 18 countries: Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Mauritius, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK and USA. The International Boycott is presently being coordinated by Baby Milk Action.

What You Can Do
Nestle, is the world's largest baby food company and increases it's profits by promoting artificial infant feeding in violation of the W.H.O. code that has been signed by the US and many other nations. Nestle knows that once a bottle has become between a mother and her child breastfeeding is more likely to fail and the company has gained a customer. Because of Nestle's continued disrespect for the International Code and infant health the best thing you can do is stop purchasing Nestle products.

For a list of Nestle products, visit our handy visual list. http://www.breastfeeding.com/advocacy/advocacy_nestle_products.html

For more information about the boycott, and for recent news of code violations and more, contact Baby Milk Action;

http://www.babymilkaction.org/