Donating produce to the food bank

After feeling pretty overwhelmed this weekend (and really the last few weeks) with our plentiful tomato harvest, I decided to quit moping about what I couldn't do, and do something I've always wanted to do. Share our garden with people who need fresh produce.

Last year, we intended to give the contents of one entire raised bed to the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank through its Community Harvest Program. Well, nature got the best of us and we basically had nothing to donate because nothing did well enough.

Not this year!

These two boxes are full of ripe and almost ripe tomatoes, complete with notes about the types included, ready to go to our local food pantry yesterday. 

It was simple. I visited the GPCFB's Community Harvest page, and looked at the donation options. Because of other commitments, I couldn't get to a Saturday drop-off, and I can't make it to the actual food bank during their open hours because I'm at work the entire time and it's too far to go during lunch.

So I looked up my neighborhood's local pantry through their online tool and made a simple phone call. Within 15 minutes, I got a call back that they'd love to take them! I also contacted a friend who does a lot of work with a local women's shelter, and they are willing to take the next batch.

I don't tell you this because I'm an awesome person for donating tomatoes to a food pantry. But because if you've already preserved all you can and the alternative is for the produce to go bad, consider making a donation through Community Harvest. All it took for me was 5 minutes on the phone and a two second trip, basically across the street, to drop off the boxes. If you're not in the greater Pittsburgh area, call your local food bank. You never know what resources they'd have to help you get the produce to people who need it.

I hope next year to plan a little better when it comes to the produce donation so we can make this happen more regularly, instead of waiting until I'm about ready to rip my hair out with frustration. Maybe that dream of the Community Harvest bed will be a reality!

book review: Foodopoly by Wenonah Hauter

I added this book to my list of reads after I realized that the author is the executive director of Food & Water Watch, an advocacy organization I follow quite closely. I was expecting it to contain about the same types of information that I usually find in books about the food movement. Interesting and informative, but not much new.

Well, I was wrong. Foodopoly did have some familiar themes, but the level of research and explanation in this book blew me away. Hauter's main argument is that while focusing on changing consumer behavior and "voting with your fork" is important and has its benefits, no large scale change will happen without complete reform of the faulty industrial, corporate-controlled agriculture system that we have now. 

What this book does really well is explain how we got to where we are, and what the factors are that contribute to it staying this way (and getting worse). I expected a book with such an extensive and thorough notes section to be dry, and while it did take me longer to read than some other food books, it's because there was so much information to absorb. 

Reading Foodopoly really hammered home for me how much of a privilege it is to be able to buy food from local farmers, living in an urban area where many farmers are able to make a living by providing food direct to consumer. I was reminded that many small and mid-size farms across the country do not have direct-to-consumer sales as an option, and are forced to grow commodity crops where they are paid less than the cost to produce and to work within monopolistic corporate systems. 

This book covers antitrust laws through this country's history and the impact that deregulation has had on food and farming in America. Though I knew that many organic producers have been taken over by giant food conglomerates and that only a handful of corporations control all sectors of our food chain, reading Hauter's logical explanations of what happens behind the scenes makes you realize that this country has allowed business to be the watchdogs of our public health and welfare.  

Foodopoly also covers genetic tinkering - not just genetic engineering of plants and animals, but synthetic biology and the groups that are trying to use government money to actually create life for profit. Here as in other places in the book, compelling evidence and meticulous research support her arguments. 

The only thing I felt this book lacked was a "now what" at the end. I was waiting for a chapter on practical ways to support the kind of large scale political movement she describes, especially after the book fired me up so passionately about moving beyond just supporting our CSAs and avoiding processed foods, etc. I do have a goal to write to my legislators more often this year, and I'll continue to try to read up on legislative and judicial instances where public comment is needed. If you're looking for research and facts to back up the feeling that our system needs to be fixed and not just consumer behavior, Foodopoly is a fantastic place to start.

picking your ethical battles as a consumer

In our global economy, where much of what we consume from foods to retail goods is produced overseas, it's hard to know not only what you are getting, but who made it and where. "Ethically sourced" and "conflict free" are some of the buzz words surrounding this issue. They come up in the media when a large-scale tragedy occurs (such as the collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh that killed more than 1,000 workers) or a lawsuit is filed (such as the one filed against Apple for child labor in its Chinese factories).

We're outraged when we hear about these incidents, and rightfully so. And they go on and on. Diamonds that are called "conflict" or "blood" diamonds (because they are illegally mined and sold to fund wars in war zones. Chocolate harvested by children who are also enslaved. Smart phones with parts made in Asian factories with bad conditions and gold mined with child labor in Africa. Coffee and other crops harvested with little to no profit to the grower. Beloved cookies made with palm oil, which destroys habitat for animals and precious rainforest. You could write for days on each of these issues and the conflicts they create.

Many of these lines are murky. For instance, it is almost entirely impossible to source a conflict-free diamond unless it's made in a laboratory. Once diamonds are brought in for trade, they are legitimized and their "dirty histories" wiped away. (See this enlightening article for details on why this is the case.) And while most people are interested in the use of diamond profit to fund wars, there's also the issue of who mines those stones in the first place - children. 

The same goes for smart phones. An ever-expanding electronic industry has made the demand for gold and the other minerals (copper, cobalt, tin, etc.) used in production increase, and Human Rights Watch has questioned the use of child labor in very dangerous mining jobs. Like diamonds, it's nearly impossible to buy an ethically "clean" smart phone. The supply chains for the hundreds of materials used to create a phone are complex, diverse and sometimes untraceable.   

I only very rarely eat chocolate that is not fair trade or organic. (See this post - did a slave harvest the cocoa in your candy bar? for details.) I don't eat at fast food restaurants for a variety of ethical reasons that go beyond health. 

I also wear an engagement ring with a diamond in it. I use a smart phone and a Chromebook.

I buy as much produce and meat from local farms as possible, and buy other handmade, local products when I can. 

I wear clothes that I purchase at retail stores that don't say "Made in the USA" on the tags. Or that the cloth it was made from is produced there either.

So what do you do? What do you do if you want to be an ethical consumer in a world where those lines are sometimes virtually impossible to understand?

My philosophy is this. I heard during a lecture once (or read in a book maybe?) that you can judge a person by the integrity of their compromises. For myself, I try to pick battles that meet two criteria: (1) it's within my control and (2) has a reasonable alternative which can satisfy my ethical conundrum. 

I can choose to not purchase produce and other food products (meat, dairy, etc.) which are not produced and farmed in a manner I approve of, and a reasonable alternative is to buy them locally and be a member of a CSA. I don't eat at fast food restaurants because I can reasonably choose local restaurants where many of my ethical issues with fast food are not present. Or I can just not eat out at all. (Novel idea!) Chocolate isn't even a necessary food in the first place, but if I want chocolate, I can buy fair trade or organic chocolate, which satisfies my issue with child labor and slavery practices.

But I am going to choose to use a cell phone and to keep wearing my engagement ring. Because I can't buy a locally made cell phone as an alternative, there's no one who benefits from me not purchasing that one phone. I would be better off supporting organizations such as Human Rights Watch, which use their lobbying power to help change legislation to protect labor forces and get corporations (such as Apple and other electronics manufacturers) to own up to their supply chains and face monetary penalties for not doing so. 

That being said, I don't need to go overboard on my consumption of retail goods in the first place. I realize that there are many other ways in which I could live my life "more ethically" and I try to think through purchases and understand what role I play in the world by being a consumer. I also do my best to research and understand what's at stake with a particular issue, so that I'm not just hopping on a trendy, petition-signing bandwagon.

At the end of the day, I hope my compromises can be judged to be made with integrity, in the absence of perfection.  

2 years fast food free

There was a time in my life where the song "McDonald's Girl" could have been written about me. I worked there in high school and college, for a combined total of about 5 years, both as a regular crew member and a swing manager. I could write for days about my experiences there. It's where I started drinking Diet Coke and eating cheese and bread. (Yeah, it's honestly true. No wonder I was the size of a peanut in high school.) French fries were my absolute favorite food and McDonald's had the best ones.  

That's why it's kind of bizarre that as of the end of January, I've been fast food free for 2 years and 4 months. I had my last fast food French fry when we visited Chicago for our first Star Trek convention in September 2011. I'm defining fast food as any of the following, and restaurants like them: McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Taco Bell, Long Johns, Subway and Arby's. You get the drift. (I am going to use McDonald's as my example in this post, since I have a great deal of knowledge about it, having worked there.)

A lot of people understand that in giving up junk food, you'd cut down on the amount of times you hit the drive thru. So that's not surprising. But people are often surprised to know that I won't eat fast food at all - salads and fruit, and even bottled water included. 

I'm not going to lie. I still smell McDonald's when I go to a turnpike rest stop or some other food court and I am tempted to lean my head back and dump a large fry down my throat. The smell of the restaurant brings back a lot of memories for me. But I am able to resist the temptation because my reasons for NOT eating fast food are varied and truly important to me.

1. Health
It's no secret that the majority of the food served at McDonald's isn't good for you. And while it's possible to lose weight or not gain weight while eating a lot of McDonald's (I ate A LOT of McDonald's when I worked there.), weight isn't the only indicator of health. Nutritionally, fast food has a lot of empty calories, and its menus contain huge amounts of additives and chemicals. It's ironic that I started to like cheese and bread while working there, since the cheese is barely cheese and the bread is barely bread. Practically everything is processed in one way or another and it's about the farthest away from "clean food" that you can get.

2. Sourcing of food
It's not just what's in fast food that I have an issue with. It's where it comes from. The meats are all sourced from CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations), as well as the eggs. Dairy is likely from cows that have been given rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone) and antibiotics are probably everywhere. I don't eat meat in general that has been raised like that, and I don't want the dairy or the eggs either.

It's worth noting that just recently McDonald's announced that it would "commit to sourcing sustainable beef" in 2016. But considering its track record and the fact that no real definition exists of "sustainable beef," it feels like more of a marketing/PR stunt than anything.

3. Environment
McDonald's generates a lot of waste. It also contributes to monocultures that harm farmland because it insists on vegetables that will taste exactly the same across its global empire. (The russett burbank potato for its fries is a big issue.) Their produce is not farmed sustainably or organically, and so you've got the issue of pesticides as well. Mass meat production is not good for the environment either - CAFOs and meat processing plants are huge polluters.

4. Workers
There have been a lot of protests across the country about raising the wage of fast food workers and lobbying for better employee benefits and treatment. I was drastically underpaid for the work I was responsible for when I worked at McDonald's and I often worked in very unsafe conditions. No one at our store, even the store manager, was eligible for benefits of any kind, not even paid vacation. I was given two dirty shirts and a name tag when I started, and we didn't get even one free meal during our shifts, just a small discount. (We were a franchise, so the owner wasn't required to provide any of that for us, like they might to a degree at a corporate store.) Without wading into the debate about what actually constitutes a living wage, fast food workers deserve more than they get, especially when the C-suite leaders at the top are swimming on gold coins like Scrooge McDuck, on the backs of the people making minimum wage.

It's also worth noting that industrial farmworkers are also abused and suffer from pesticide exposure and wage fraud on a huge scale - and these are the companies where fast food companies source their food.     

5. Advertising to kids
It's true that most 6 year olds don't get to McDonald's on their own. They are presumably taken by adults, who are the ones making the choices about what their kids eat. But the insidious marketing by McDonald's to very young children - ones unable to discern what advertising actually is - is unacceptable. I personally would see the same kids every single day for multiple meals at McDonald's, with parents who didn't just use it as an occasional treat, but as routine meals for their kids. The kids were hyped up on it and wanted the toys that came with their meals. And it made me sad that these kids were being set up to crave this food, even though anyone knows that double cheeseburgers aren't the greatest nourishment for growing bodies. And chicken nuggets that are barely chicken aren't either.

6. Shady charity activities
McDonald's is known for its signature charity, the Ronald McDonald House. Which, let's state for the record, is an awesome charity, providing housing and support for families with sick children across the country. There's no denying that. But there is a lot of evidence that McDonald's uses the Ronald McDonald House as a marketing/PR tool, without giving a lot of financial support (sometimes only about 10% of a local chapter's necessary support). For more about this, read Michele Simon's report here, on Eat Drink Politics. 

Some of these issues are specific to McDonald's, but most of them apply to all fast food. And that's why I turned my back on fast food more than two years ago. Even though it's cheap and convenient, I choose to go without. 



  

why Superior Motors is so important - and not just for Pittsburgh

This past week a Kickstarter campaign started by a local chef, Kevin Sousa, was not only fully funded, but became the most successful Kickstarter campaign for a restaurant in that site's history. The campaign was for a community restaurant concept called Superior Motors, named as such after the Chevy dealership formerly located in that space. Also notable about the space? It's located in Braddock, a Pittsburgh neighborhood devastated by the loss of the steel industry, with a 90% population loss. It doesn't even have a McDonald's, let alone a restaurant with dinner service. (View the videos describing the project here.)

Mark generously contributed to the campaign as a birthday gift to me. For awhile it looked like they weren't going to meet their goal. Which would have meant the end for the concept, since though Mr. Sousa is a James Beard semi-finalist chef with a loyal following, banks are not interested in investments in such an economically distressed area.

But in the eleventh hour, a dramatic surge of support pushed the campaign way over the top and it was fully funded. 124% funded, to be exact. 

From Kickstarter campaign website

Superior Motors will be an accessible restaurant for Braddock's residents, and will help to educate Braddock youth with free professional culinary instruction. A greenhouse on the roof, with room for raised beds, a hostel next door with free housing for workers, a nearby apiary and flock of hens, plus the Grow Pittsburgh Braddock farms nearby, providing the majority of the produce for the restaurant are just some of the layers to this ambitious concept. The Kickstarter information indicates that a core principle will be that no Braddock resident will be excluded from partaking based upon household income. (Visit the page and read more about the details of this project. It's fascinating.)

And that right there is what makes this concept revolutionary. Yes, the success of the campaign should be looked at as an example of what can happen when Pittsburgh comes together. It truly is an amazing place to live and even when I'm shaking my fist in my car at the traffic approaching the Fort Pitt Tunnel, I am blessed to live and work here. But this goes beyond Pittsburgh.

Fine dining is virtually inaccessible to anyone below a certain economic threshold. And because of that, it's often thought of as elitist. The same holds true for many issues around health and food. People validly argue that only focusing on issues like organic agriculture and GMO labeling obscures the fact that thousands of Americans don't have enough FOOD, let alone healthy food.

I am so moved by this concept because it holds at its core the value that good, fresh, quality food belongs to everyone - even communities that have been largely abandoned by society. The idea of Superior Motors embodies the word 'community' by feeding, nourishing and sustaining not just the people, but the land and the place and history. It places value there and encourages others to follow. Other communities across the country will look to this project as well, and hopefully attempt to rally around similar investments in their own areas.  

I am so excited to see Superior Motors develop and can't wait to go eat there someday. It's going to be worth braving the tunnel traffic, that's for sure.    

reading this week

I'm still processing all that I learned and saw at the Mother Earth News Fair, but look for recaps on that soon. In the meantime, here's what I've been reading this week.

USDA guts national organic law (Consumers Union)

The USDA recently changed the process of exempting prohibited substances in foods labeled as organic, without having any public comment period. Previously, prohibited substances were given five year periods in which they could be exempted, while alternatives could be found. After that period, they'd expire unless a two-thirds majority of the National Organic Standards Board allowed it, AFTER a public comment period. 

Now, all of that has been erased and these substances can be allowed indefinitely, and with no public comment period, outside of the public view. Not only does it weaken the already relatively weak organic standards, but it pulls more of our food processes behind closed door and decreases transparency.  

CDC's thoroughly convincing report on the threat of antibiotic resistance (Food Politics)
A great infographic on how antibiotic resistance is created, plus links to other stories explaining the issue.

Monsanto could get away with GMO contamination (Salon)

A Washington state farmer's alfalfa crop has been found to contain a GMO trait, which has stopped him from being able to export it (as European nations have much more strict laws regulating GMOs than the U.S.). How this plays out will be interesting, though I'd venture to guess the government will not go out of its way to protect the farmer.

Factory Food From Above: Satellite Images of Industrial Farms (Wired)
Enhanced images from satellites of the feedlots that house industrial meat production

Food banks are a 'slow death of the soul' (The Guardian)
A really interesting take on food pantries from someone who runs one. What he does? It's my dream job. I was asked once in a job interview what my dream would be, and I said if I had capital, I'd open a food pantry that was a community garden and had cooking and gardening classes. To help people get on their feet and empower them to make good choices.

10 Reasons for Gardeners to Love Chickens (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Self-explanatory. :)

Chipotle's imagination - how pure is it?

You might have seen this haunting and beautiful new viral commercial from Chipotle (complete with a Fiona Apple cover of 'Pure Imagination'). If not, check it out below.

The first time I saw it, I thought, YES! Beautiful animation, great music, down with Big Food! Hooray! 

And then I saw this response from Funny or Die.

Honest Scarecrow - watch more funny videos

So which one is right? Should we see Chipotle as a corporation trying to educate the public and make a real change in how industrial food is sourced and produced? Or are they trying to manipulate us into purchasing their "better" burritos?

I'd say both. 

When it comes to sourcing ingredients, Chipotle does set itself apart from virtually all other quick-service restaurant chains (with the possible exception of Moe's, which sources their meat with more discretion than say, McDonald's). They use the tag "food with integrity." Most of their meats are produced without giving the animals added hormones or sub-therapeutic antibiotics. They claim to source their produce locally and organically "when practical" and use dairy products from cows raised without added hormones. 

The fact that this information is even available on their website sets them apart from other restaurants, who make claims about the "quality" of their food and its "freshness" but not about where it came from. No matter what, Chipotle deserves credit for even acknowledging that it matters where your food comes from and in the case of meat and dairy, how the animal was raised. I don't see Ronald McDonald giving kids lectures on the CAFO feedlots where Mayor McCheese sources his beef.

However.

Chipotle is still a huge corporation. In 2012, they made $2.7 BILLION in sales revenue. They have corporate interests, with shareholders to please. And they spend an enormous amount of money on marketing, including this commercial and its accompanying games. This commercial was designed with the intent to (as the Funny or Die parody points out) tug at your heart strings and make you feel something. Yes, it is telling you that industrial agriculture is fundamentally not "right." But it's also telling you to buy Chipotle burritos. Don't make the burrito at home with whole, clean foods. Buy Chipotle and let them do the worrying about where the food comes from. You can TRUST them.

The last time I was in a Chipotle, there was a sign saying the beef was conventionally raised. While I respect that they bothered to even inform people of that, it's true that they would rather purchase and serve conventional beef than say "we're out of beef today, please choose pork, vegetables or chicken." To me that says that profit (and the satisfaction of customers who want their beef, no matter what) comes first.

Let's not forget that Chipotle also admits that GMOs are present in most of their menu items (save for salad fixings and the pork carnitas). While they have labeled the items and claim to be working toward eliminating them, they still are reliant on GMO soy and corn, including the soybean oil used to cook their rice (which is also why the rice is so high-cal). So while they are taking steps toward moving beyond some industrial agriculture practices, they are fully entrenched in others. 

Does this mean you should stop eating at Chipotle? Not necessarily. I don't lump them in the same category as McDonald's, since of quick-service restaurants they have shown the most transparency with their ingredients and a willingness to respond to increasing consumer demand for more sustainable, humanely raised food. But you should know what you're eating - and when you see something like the Scarecrow, recognize it for what it is - beautiful, haunting marketing - and let it inspire you to make your own burrito.

why you need to watch "A Place at the Table"

I actually saw A Place at the Table about a month ago, thanks to Amazon Prime allowing me to rent it while it was in theaters. I've been stewing on it since, wondering whether or not to write about the issue of hunger. After all, I live in a two-income household where we are most decidedly NOT food insecure, and I also grew up in a family where I never went one day hungry. I've always been grateful for that, at least on a surface level. But I've never felt that gratitude so profoundly as I did when I saw this film.

Here's the synopsis, from the film's website:

Fifty million people in the U.S.—one in four children—don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Directors Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush examine the issue of hunger in America through the lens of three people struggling with food insecurity: Barbie, a single Philadelphia mother who grew up in poverty and is trying to provide a better life for her two kids; Rosie, a Colorado fifth-grader who often has to depend on friends and neighbors to feed her and has trouble concentrating in school; and Tremonica, a Mississippi second-grader whose asthma and health issues are exacerbated by the largely empty calories her hardworking mother can afford.

You read that correctly. 25% of American children are food insecure, meaning that they don't know where their next meal is coming from. 1 in 6 Americans don't have enough to eat. Among countries with advanced economies, America ranks worst for food insecurity among its citizens. 1 in 2 American children will receive supplemental food assistance during their lifetimes. Half. More than 23 million Americans live in food deserts, where the availability of fresh, healthy food is severely limited if it exists at all and a grocery store with the amenities most of us take for granted is a car ride away.

This documentary was powerful, not just because of the facts and statistics it presented about how bad the problem actually is, but because it made you look into the faces of hungry people. It forced you to confront the grim realities that families across America confront every day - how do you put your son to bed at night when he asks for more food and you have no money and nothing in your cupboards and you've already exhausted your allotted food pantry distribution? What do you do when you know your daughter isn't doing well in school because she's so hungry she can't concentrate? How do you get a nation of simultaneously obese and hungry people? How is this happening in America, of all places?

For the first time in history, we have a hunger problem in our country that is not due to a shortage of food. America produces more food than we could ever possibly consume, and as we know, much of it is wasted. But we have spent trillions of dollars on food subsidies for corporations and not individuals; we spend more money bailing out banks than we do our own working poor. We give government subsidies for unhealthy calories - as the price of fresh, healthy food rises, the cost of packaged, corn based junk goes lower and lower. If you need calories to survive, you can get the most caloric bang for your buck on the fast food dollar menu. Why are we surprised when this type of diet takes its toll?

This film highlights some great work food banks are doing. In my area, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank does amazing work. Mark and I are even planning on growing an extra raised bed of food this summer for its produce donations. But food banks can't provide for every need, and they have to function with what they are given. Donations that come from grocery stores are often processed, shelf-stable foods. We can't feed America on charity alone. We need real, bipartisan legislative protections for food assistance and school lunches. Hunger doesn't have any regard for party politics and it doesn't discriminate. Many of us who are food secure now could just as easily not be, given the right combination of circumstances.

Which brings me to the biggest lesson I learned from this film. A reminder, more than a lesson. I think that one of the legacies American society inherited from its forefathers was the attitude that if you just work hard enough, you'll be fine. Self-sufficiency has been our motto for centuries, to the point where people hear the words welfare and food stamps and equate that with laziness and fraud. Any system that we try to run as humans will have its share of fraud and people that manage to take advantage of the system. But there are people who work more hours a week than I do, in harder circumstances, that still need welfare to feed their kids. And they aren't sitting at home watching cable drinking booze and collecting the government's money. I worked at a grocery store in graduate school, and the people that came through with EBT cards weren't flaunting their good fortune for everyone to see, that's for damn sure.

This film reminds you that people just like you are going to go to bed tonight with an ache in their stomachs because they didn't eat today so their kids could. Or they ate today, but have no idea whether they will tomorrow. If it was your child asking you for food because he was so hungry he couldn't sleep, wouldn't you hope that someone had stood up for you in the halls of Congress and in the White House to give you a stronger safety net? Food is fundamental and we need to treat it as such. 

We cannot hope as a country to accomplish real social change until we feed our people. Food and water and shelter are among the most basic of needs, and in a country with overflowing wealth, it's a travesty that we allow the basic needs of our citizens to go unanswered. How can we expect to develop the leaders of tomorrow when malnutrition stunts children's ability to learn and grow? Which future scientist or world leader is going to bed without a full belly tonight?

Challenge yourself and watch A Place at the Table. Find out what you can do to take a stand against hunger here. Consider also donating to your local food bank to help meet immediate needs, especially if that food bank takes fresh food donations. When you are drowning in zucchini and tomatoes in a few months, stop and be grateful for the bounty with which you are blessed and share. 

Starting with a food bank garden bed and letters to my legislators, I'm making a commitment to myself to revisit this issue again until I'm satisfied that I'm doing my part to give everyone a place at the table. Will you?

did a slave harvest the cocoa in your candy bar?

I spend a lot of time thinking about the ethics of what I consume (and not just since reading Peter Singer's book). I am constantly asking myself when I am at a store or a restaurant - how is this product more than just a thing to buy? How does it affect the environment, the hands that produced it, my health, etc. This is especially true for what I think of as luxury foods - the ones that we really don't need to survive. High on that list is chocolate. 

Cocoa beans are grown in tropical climates - primarily West Africa and Latin America. West Africa is by far the largest producer, with 35% of the world's supply of chocolate coming from Ivory Coast alone. Cocoa bean harvesting is hard work. Workers harvest pods from trees using machetes and then gather the pods in heavy sacks. Agricultural chemicals such as pesticides and fungicides are used on the trees, which exposes workers to detrimental health effects. 

But who is doing that work? Too often, the unsettling answer is forced/slave labor, including children under age 12. Add the difficult and unsafe nature of the work to the conditions of extreme poverty (malnourishment and unsanity conditions) as well as a lack of access to education and the threat of physical violence, and you have major violations of International Labour Organization (ILO) standards, particularly for children. The minimum age for children to work is 15, and the rule is 18 for hazardous jobs - and harvesting chocolate with machetes and being sprayed with chemicals qualifies as hazardous.

Thousands of trafficked children working in the cocoa industry have been documented, leading to enough debate that in 2001, the industry started making promises that it would work to eliminate child or forced labor/slavery from its supply lines. These promises were voluntary, and done in response to a legislative battle. In 2001, Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Eliot Engel introduced an amendment to an agricultural bill that would give the FDA resources to create a label that would indicate that no child labor was used in the creation of that product. The bill passed in the house, but was stalled in the Senate due to intense industry lobbying. 

Rather than have the bill pass, the industry negotiated what's known as the Harkin-Engel Protocol in September 2001. The industry (including 8 major chocolate companies) set July 2005 as a deadline to establish credible standards as they related to adult forced labor and "the worst forms of child labor." 

By 2005, they hadn't met the deadline and failed to create and implement an industry-wide certification standard. The signers met and gave themselves an extension to 2008. And then they blew that deadline. And they gave themselves until 2010. In 2010, when they STILL had not met the protocol's objectives, they vowed to reduce the instances of child labor and slavery by 70% by 2020.

Much of this struggle over more than 10 years has been a blame game. Governments of west African countries say they don't have the resources to investigate and prosecute violations. The industry says they can't be held responsible for what suppliers do, and that it's the suppliers' responsibility to ensure that their beans were not harvested by children. (Most chocolate producers buy their cocoa at commodities exchanges where cocoa from many Ivory Coast sources is mixed. They claim they don't know where their beans come from.) A group even tried to sue the industry on behalf of three children trafficked from Mali and put to work in cocoa harvesting, but the U.S. determined that corporations cannot be held responsible for violations of international law. 

A few things are clear. Chocolate manufacturers have acknowledged publicly that child labor, slavery, and forced adult labor exists in their industry, and in their supply chains. They have not invested the resources to stop these practices in their quest for ever-cheaper cocoa. (The cheapest form of labor is slavery.) 

If the chocolate factories that are in central PA just a few hours from my home were to employ 7 year olds to work the machinery for 12 hours a day, make them live in a slum and deny them education and nutritious food, a public riot would ensue and the factories would be shut down. But our empathy doesn't extend halfway across the world, especially when it would mean passing up that chocolate bar.


So what do you do, though, if you really like chocolate? Are there any alternatives? Here are a few recommendations.

1. Buy organic chocolate.
Organic chocolate is typically grown in Latin American countries, where there have been no reports or documentation of child labor or slavery in cocoa production. Check the country of origin to be sure, but you are probably fine eating most organic chocolate.

2. Buy Fair Trade.
This is a contentious issue, because no labeling system is perfect, and when you live in Pittsburgh you are trusting that someone halfway across the world is doing in practice what the label promises in theory. Also, fair trade has been accused of taking away the livelihood of small farmers who are not connected with the certification organizations. That's a fair statement, especially when it comes to industries like coffee and tea where child labor has not historically been an issue. 

But in a situation where your options are chocolate produced by companies who have not been able to create any semblance of a certification system in more than 10 years and who readily acknowledge that there is child labor/slavery in their supply chains and a company that has done the leg work to work toward a fair wage for adult labor and production (NOT children), go with fair trade. There are lots of great fair trade options popping up in grocery stores now - not even just the specialty grocers. One of my absolute favorites is Theo Chocolate, an American chocolatier that produces organic, fair trade chocolate from bean to bar. 

For me, it comes down to this. I look into the face of my beautiful little niece and think, somewhere in Mali there's a child just like you, who in 6 years will be up in a tree with a machete in the middle of the scorching heat, having not had enough to eat, away from her family. All because in America, we want our mocha lattes. And so, I can't buy and try not to consume any chocolate that could have been produced with cocoa harvested by slaves - child or adult.

 

Oxfam: Behind the Brands

Behind the Brands is part of the GROW Campaign from Oxfam. The GROW Campaign "aims to build a better food system: one that sustainably feeds a growing population (estimated to reach nine billion by 2050) and empowers poor people to earn a living, feed their families, and thrive." 

Behind the Brands is a new initiative that aims to get consumers involved in what large food companies are doing. They rate companies based on their transparency, treatment of women, worker treatment on farms in their supply chains, the farmers, the land, the water and the climate. They then communicate the information to consumers and ask consumers to speak up and hold companies accountable for what happens along their supply chains.

The website has interesting information about which companies own which brands, and it's great that Oxfam was able to use a ton of publicly available data and organize and distill it down so that it makes clear a larger picture of what's wrong with our food system. And I'm a firm believer that the food choices we make matter beyond their nutritional makeup - ethical choices are important. 

One of my hesitations behind this initiative is that I feel like it's indirectly supporting these companies. I know it could be argued that Mars as a company is not going away because I choose not to buy M&Ms, and that many people across the world depend on that company for their livelihood, but I still won't support the company with my money for making baby steps in one area while completely ignoring others.
 

This program also cannot score companies based on the actual conditions that exist on their farms and in their supply chains or the actual treatment of workers on a day to day basis because of the companies' confidentiality. They can only be scored based on their corporate policies. This makes me highly skeptical of what kind of impact this campaign could ever really have on the day to day lives of the people it hopes to impact. I have never worked at a job in my life where the company's corporate policies were a match for my daily work environment. How about you?

It will be interesting to watch this initiative play out, if it stands the test of time. At the very least, a call for consumers to demand better from the companies that supply our food is something we should all get behind.