“Okay, call it slavery, but you know they’re dirt poor down there anyway…”
(Nestlé spokesperson)
Tony’s Chocolonely tastes amazingly good.
The story is best told by Tony himself:
“One warm summer morning, Tony van de Keuken was reading a newspaper. On page 13 he found a short item about human trafficking in the cocoa industry. About children being sold at markets to slave traders. That was in 2002—one hundred and thirty-nine years after the abolition of slavery.
Tony is not only a big fan of chocolate, but also a journalist. The brief article in the newspaper continued to haunt him, so he did some research on the subject. It soon turned out that hundreds of thousands of children are being forced to work on cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast, the country where most of the cocoa comes from. Since chocolate is a blend of cocoa from different areas, every chocolate bar is basically tainted by slavery. And slavery is a criminal offence.
In March 2004, accompanied by a good lawyer, Tony went to the public prosecutor to turn himself in as a chocolate criminal. After all, he now knew that his favourite chocolate bars were produced with the help of child slaves. And buying something that you know was obtained by means of a criminal offence is punishable in the Netherlands by up to four years in prison. Then he had another bar….
Six months later, the public prosecutor dismissed the charges that Tony had brought against himself. Slavery was not a priority. The Netherlands had more pressing problems. Since Tony did not agree with this decision, he took it to the Supreme Court. For this, he needed the testimonies of ex-slaves. Fortunately for him, these are not hard to find in Africa.
Before long it was 2005, an important year for the chocolate industry. Four years earlier, all major chocolate producers had signed a covenant pledging the slave-free production of chocolate by 1 July 2005. They would be advertising this with a slave-free hallmark on every wrapper. Tony knew that multinationals are adept at making promises but not as good at keeping them.
Coincidentally (or perhaps not), the remake of Roald Dahl’s masterpiece Charlie and the Chocolate Factory opened in cinemas in July 2005. Nestlé would be making Willy Wonka chocolate bars in connection with the film, so Tony challenged them to produce the bars guaranteed slave-free. Nestlé didn’t like the idea. The covenant had turned out to be hollow. Not one of the chocolate producers had kept to the agreement.
Tony decided to start making chocolate bars himself and to be the first to bring a guaranteed slave-free chocolate bar to the market. He bought five thousand bars, the first of which became available in stores on 29 November 2005:
Tony’s Chocolonely®, with a slave-free logo. The bars sold out in one day.
It is a great success. Tony has gone into business. This is the twenty-first century. Slavery is archaic!”
A good laugh from the start... — 1 year ago
