"Fair Trade" Does Not an Ethical Chocolate Bar Make

Much ado has been made recently about Cadbury's decision to go Fair Trade with its Dairy Milk chocolate bar line, the top-selling chocolate bar in the UK (sort of like the British equivalent of Hershey's, for Americans who aren't familiar). But although the company should absolutely be commended for its concern for cocoa farmers and its commitment to helping them via a switch to Fair Trade, this move doesn't suddenly make the bars devoid of ethical problems; there are still mothers, sons, and daughters quite literally dying for the Dairy Milk bars from Cadbury and for other chocolate.

And although this announcement was written about and celebrated in various venues, it was the title and content of a recent Guardian article, "Socially aware chocoholics rejoice as Cadbury's Dairy Milk goes Fairtrade," that really struck me. The article began with this line:

Good news: eating bars of Dairy Milk is no longer greedy — it's snacking with a social conscience.

And that's where I let out a sad sigh.

It remains a deeply unfortunate truth that most people's "social conscience"--and that of society at large--is limited to a focus on humans and sometimes environment and/or romanticized wildlife. And so they don't see the problem in "no longer greedy" and "snacking with a social conscience" being attached to a discussion of dairy consumption, when human consumption of dairy (and how we get dairy) is one of the most stark examples of our greed, our selfishness, and the self-serving limits of our "social conscience."

We have no nutritional need for the breast milk of another species (before anyone asks, yes, we can easily get adequate calcium from plant sources). Our bodies are designed to wean off our mother's milk when we are children, just as calves and goat kids and other mammals at some point in their youth are meant to wean off their mother's milk that is made for them. Yet despite the rather unnatural nature of adult humans consuming other species' milk (and despite even the known negative health effects in many cases), we insist that we want it and that we will take it by whatever means--and we do.

Taking and consuming dairy is the very epitome of greed. We take semen from a bull we have turned into nothing more than a semen-producing machine. We then effectively rape the "dairy cow" to impregnate her with it. When her baby is born, the baby she has been carrying and communicating with and waiting to meet for months, we take that baby away immediately--the baby cries out; the mother bellows and struggles; we don't care. We kill most of the babies immediately or within days and sell them as "bob veal" or first confine them, severely restrict their movement, and feed them an intentionally nutritionally deficient diet before dragging them, often quite literally, to the slaughterhouse to also become "veal."

All the while, the babies search and cry out for the mothers. All the while, the mothers cry out for and mourn them. All the while, we keep taking and drinking the milk that those calves needed and for which we are ordering they be killed. The female calves who aren't killed as babies are kept alive so that they can replace their mothers, who will soon be old and worn down before their time, as the cycle of rape, impregnation, and separation from and killing of baby repeats each year, every time the mother's milk intended for her now dead, packaged, and veal-labeled previous baby starts to slow. Following year after year of physical exploitation, emotional trauma, abuse, painful infections, and more, these "dairy cows" will find themselves in the same slaughterhouses, on the same killing floor, where each of their trembling babies died over the years.

This is not true just of "conventional" or "factory farm" dairy. These basic facts are true of all dairy. Organic dairy. Dairy from "grass-fed" cows. Small-farm dairy. And yes, dairy from other species too, such as goat dairy. Newborns and young babies are traumatized, put through hell, and killed, and mothers are traumatized, abused, exploited, and repeatedly put through the most excruciating experience a mother can imagine, for years, before ultimately being brutally slaughtered and turned into hamburger, all so that humans can eat and drink something they don't even need. That is greed, my friends. It is cruelty, and it is absolutely greed.

If you want your eating to be "no longer greedy"? If you're committing to "snacking with a social conscience"? Dairy--in any form, from any farm or company, as an ingredient in any food--does not fit into that equation. Dairy consumption is inherently cruel, inherently greedy.

So in this particular case, I am not comforted by the idea alone of farmers being compensated fairly for the cocoa they provide--because the ones being harmed most by Cadbury Dairy Milk bars and other dairy-containing products are still the ones suffering the most, and there is no adequate compensation for what is done to them.

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Looking for vegan chocolate bars and chocolate chips? Some brands are available in mainstream grocery stories, including Endangered Species Chocolate and Tropical Source/SunSpire (always check the ingredients and labels to be sure the specific bar you're looking at is dairy-free and ethically sourced). But if you can't find what you want at your local store, or if you're looking for something a bit fancier (e.g., boxed chocolates), or even for milk chocolate-style bars (made with rice milk), don't worry--the Internet is your friend. I recommend checking out the selection at all three of the following stores. The variety is impressive, and different stores carry different offerings:

• Chocolate Bars and Boxes from Pangea: The Vegan Store
• Chocolate from Vegan Essentials
• Chocolates and Candies from Cosmo's Vegan Shoppe

And always feel free to contact individual companies to inquire as to where they get their chocolate/cocoa.