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Food

25th Jan 2021

Chocolate company launches look-a-like bars to raise awareness of child labour

Cassie Stokes

“Sweet Solution to chocolate’s bitter truth.”

When you think about chocolate you think about happiness, but there are in fact still many instances of child labour happening to make some of the chocolate we see on the shelves of our local shops.

One chocolate brand who is bringing awareness to this issue is Tony’s Chocolonely.

The chocolate company has today in Ireland launched “four limited edition ‘look-alike’ chocolate bars to raise awareness of the fact that 20 years after the chocolate industry promised to eradicate illegal child labour, it is still widely prevalent.”

The company’s ‘Sweet Solution’ wants customers to take the time to sign its petition to support “the need for human rights legislation that holds companies legally accountable for modern slavery and illegal child labour in their supply chains.”

The four bars will be exclusively available in Fresh Dublin stores and online, as well as on on brownthomas.com.

Paul Schoenmakers, Head of Impact at Tony’s Chocolonely, says: “15 years after we launched our first chocolate bar to call on the industry, not enough has changed.”

“With these bars, we aren’t pointing a finger, we’re calling on the whole chocolate industry, all brands, to take responsibility and to collaborate to make 100% slave free the norm in chocolate. We are all part of the problem and we can all be part of the sweet solution.”

Tony’s chocolate bars feature facts about child labour and what their company is actively doing to eradicate it in our world today. Their chocolate bars are also delicious, so you should definitely try them if you get a chance.

“Tony’s 5 Sourcing Principles are designed to create a fairer cocoa supply chain and address the root cause of modern slavery and illegal child labour: poverty.”

The company have since set up “Tony’s Open Chain, an open source initiative available to all chocolate makers so they can do the same and that together we can make all chocolate slave free.”

You can sign the petition here.