A few weeks ago my husband sent me an email about a movie showing at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival. “I think you’ll be interested,” he wrote. I was.
The movie was The Chocolate Case, a 2016 documentary from the Netherlands. The Chocolate Case tells the story behind Tony’s Chocolonely, a chocolate company that sprang out of a journalistic prank designed to draw attention to slavery in the cocoa industry.
I was already aware of Tony’s Chocolonely and the story of how reporter Teun van de Keuken took himself to court, more or less, as someone who was complicit in human trafficking due to his consumption of chocolate. I had just begun giving chocolate-tasting parties to raise awareness of slavery in the cocoa industry. I was intrigued by Teun’s story and by claims made by Tony’s Chocolonely that fair-trade chocolate bars could not, in fact. claim to be 100% slave-free. Their product was not available in the United States at that time, so I continued to emphasize the importance of looking for Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance or UTZ certified products when shopping for chocolate.
The Chocolate Case gave me more of the story. I was horrified to see that Fair Trade certification can fail if cooperatives are poorly monitored. When Tony’s Chocolonely tried to verify that the beans they were buying for their bars were truly slave-free, they discovered that farmers participating in their particular cooperative were not getting paid the extra money they were supposed to be making as members, and even if they were receiving payments, membership fees could exceed profits from the cooperative. After this discovery, they worked to establish their own relationships with farmers so that they could verify the farms from which their cocoa beans were coming and the conditions on those farms.
The movie alternates between funny and upsetting. The journalistic team behind the enterprise never intended to launch a chocolate company; they wanted to persuade an existing company to create a slave-free chocolate bar to celebrate the 2005 release of the film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. When they couldn’t find someone to do it, they took it on themselves. Their chocolate was a roaring success in the Netherlands, and they eventually had to turn the company over to people who had the business experience to continue its growth. Their dedication to making a real difference in the cocoa industry is the sort of thing that resonates with me, so by the end of the movie, I’d turned into a fangirl for the company and for the Dutch journalists who wanted to change the cocoa industry.
The movie doesn’t end on a particularly hopeful note; one speaker cited a study by Tulane University that found conditions weren’t really better than a decade ago. The report focuses on child labor, not slave labor, but regardless of the focus, the picture isn’t pretty. Overall, more children in the cocoa industry in both Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana are being exposed to hazardous work than five years ago. Approximately a quarter of the children working are between the ages of 5 and 11. The study is disturbing and discouraging, but certainly the appropriate response is not to give up.
What made the viewing I attended particularly rewarding was the presence of Peter Zandee, U.S. sales manager for Tony’s Chocolonely. The company recently established a presence in the United States starting in Portland, Oregon. It has since begun to spread eastward and plans to eventually be available across the country. Peter answered questions after the movie, and I was fortunate enough to be able to ask him my question: Have any improvements occurred in Fair Trade certification since their initial disturbing evidence of problems in at least one cooperative a decade ago? He told me that he thought there had been improvement; Tony’s itself is Fair Trade Certified and sees itself as a “critical member” of the certifying body, working to improve fair trade for all. Given that, I feel comfortable continuing to promote choosing fair-trade chocolate over conventional bars.
There was another surprise added to our evening: samples of Tony’s Chocolonely bars. I received a dark chocolate almond sea salt bar. Because I think nuts usually spoil the experience of eating chocolate, I was a little disappointed; however, the bar was quite good. I would be willing to buy it, nuts and all.
The Chocolate Case is currently doing the film festival circuit. In addition to Minneapolis, it has shown in places like Burlington, Vermont; New York City; and Glasgow. It’s not yet available for purchase or rental, so I advise keeping an eye out for it either at a local film festival or, after some time has passed, on Amazon, on Netflix, or at your library. When you have the chance to view it, ask some friends to join you! In the meantime, start asking co-ops in your area if they are carrying Tony’s Chocolonely or if they plan to do so.