Tell Kraft Not to Destroy Cadbury's Responsible Buying Policies

Yesterday, Kraft Foods (maker of Oreos and Easy Mac) announced their purchase of Cadbury (yes, the one with the yummy creme-filled eggs at Easter). Cadbury, which is a UK-based candy company, has long been a leader in the world of corporate social responsibility (CSR), especially in buying Fair Trade cocoa and working to reduce exploitation in their supply chains. But all their good work is in danger of being reversed if international conglomerate Kraft undoes years of strong ethical policies developed by Cadbury. You can tell Kraft that if they want to keep Cadbury's customers, they had better adopt all of Cadbury's CSR policies.

Cadbury has received international recognition for being one of the first companies to commit to using Fair Trade chocolate in a flagship product, the Dairy Milk bar. They have committed to making Fair Trade Dairy Milk bars available in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and consider all their CSR policies to stem from their view of themselves as an "ethics-led" company. Kraft, on the other hand, has had a poor record on developing proactive and substantive corporate social responsibility guidelines. But Kraft now has a unique opportunity to do what is both best for their business and the most responsible thing -- adopt Cadbury's CSR policies and continue to grow their commitments to ethical sourcing. Doing so would reduce concerns from Cadbury customers that Kraft will destroy all of Cadbury's hard work in the CSR field.

If Kraft were to expand Cadbury's existing policies to cover the whole, newly-combined company, we all could be snacking on delicious Fair Trade Oreos and Nestle Crunch bars made without child slavery or exploitation. Now wouldn't that be a delicious treat!

Cadbury's policies lay out an existing, easy-to-follow roadmap to a more ethical, more sustianable Kraft-Cadbury company.  All Kraft has to do, is agree to follow it. Specifically, Kraft should agree to the following:

• continue to expand the purchase of Fair Trade certified cocoa over the next decade and increase the availability of consumer products made with Fair Trade certified cocoa;
• commit to continuing and expanding Cadbury's commitment to make Fair Trade certified chocolate bars and other products available;
• adopt Cadbury's Human Rights and Ethical Trading (HRET) policy;
• and continue Cadbury's Purple Goes Green initiative;

You can email the Irene Rosenfeld, CEO of Kraft, here, and tell them to do the right thing for their bottom line and yours -- commit to Cadbury's CSR policies.

Photo credit: sudeep