Easter is the third most popular chocolate-consuming holiday in the U.S. behind Halloween and Valentine’s Day and there is arguably no more popular product this season than Cadbury Chocolate Easter Eggs.

And while Cadbury has demonstrated its commitment to ending forced child labor on the West African cocoa industry by selling Fair Trade certified chocolates in the UK, Canada, Ireland, Japan, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, the same cannot be said of Cadbury chocolate products in the United States.

Why?

In 1988, the Hershey Company purchased Cadbury’s US chocolate business, including the exclusive rights to make and sell well-known brands like York Peppermint Patties, Cadbury Crème Eggs, and Cadbury Solid Milk Chocolate Bunnies.

Unfortunately, the Hershey Company refuses to meet the standard set by Cadbury’s overseas operations, even though hundreds of thousands of US consumers have called on Hershey to raise the bar and remove forced child labor as an ingredient in its products. These same consumers are eager to purchase treats for their families that align with their values.

The Raise the Bar Hershey Coalition has started a petition urging Hershey’s and Cadbury to offer Fair Trade Chocolate Easter eggs. Join over 5,000 people who have already signed the petition and get slave labor our of our Easter baskets and sign the petition today. 

If you’ve already signed the petition, be sure to share it with your friends. We need more voices!

For more ways to make your Spring a Fair Trade one, see some tips from our Fair Trade campaign.
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Press Release: Raise the Bar Coalition to Hershey and Cadbury: Get Child Slave Labor out of our Easter Baskets
Petition: Tell Cadbury and Hershey to offer Fair Trade Chocolates for Easter in the US!

Spring is the time of the year for renewal and hope, and there is still work to do for Fair Trade activists. Whether you celebrate Passover, Easter or neither we’ve got activities for you.

Thanks to all your support, the Hershey Company has taken a first step to trace its supply chain and prevent child labor, however, the company still has a long way to go to ensure all of its products are free from abusive child labor. With our “encouragement” it just might happen.

Here are four things you can do to make this Spring a Fair Trade one.

1) Passover Seder: At this year’s Passover Seder use this Haggadah Supplement: Next Year, an End to Forced Labor in the Cocoa Fields and tell the company about it.

2) Easter Bunny: For Easter, children can send a message to Hershey’s that they want Fair trade by coloring and writing postcards to send the message that Every bunny loves Fair Trade.

3) Sign the petition: At this time of year, there is no more popular product than Cadbury Chocolate Easter Eggs. While Cadbury has demonstrated its commitment to selling Fair Trade chocolates in the UK, Ireland, Japan, South Africa and Australia—the same cannot be said of Cadbury chocolate in the United States. Join us in telling Cadbury and Hershey to sell Fair Trade chocolate in the US!

4) Host a party: Show the movie Dark Side of Chocolate to learn more about child labor in the West Africa cocoa industry. This powerful film is a great way to recruit new Fair Trade Activists so that next year will be the year Hershey’s Raises the Bar.

Happy Spring!

The outpouring of support for Cadbury’s commitment to switch to Fair Trade in the UK by the end of this summer has been great. Now that the UK’s leading chocolate bar producer has gone Fair Trade, we’re looking toward the leading chocolate companies in the US to follow Cadbury’s lead and follow through on their commitment to go Fair Trade.

Cadbury has announced plans to begin using Fair Trade certified cocoa in the summer of 2009 for England’s leading chocolate bar, Cadbury Dairy Milk. The significance of this fantastic news is that Cadbury is the first major chocolate brand to go Fair Trade certified with one of its main product lines, one of the goals Global Exchange and other organizations have been striving towards. Cadbury’s announcement proves what Global Exchange has been saying for years: it is viable for a major chocolate bar to go Fair Trade without passing a significant cost increase to consumers. Congratulations on this important victory to all of you who have taken action by buying a Fair Trade certified chocolate bar or writing a letter to bring us to this moment!

As we all know, it is critical to write companies to pressure them to improve their performance on human rights and the environment. But it is just as important to thank companies when they make a change for the better, so that company executives can bring an outpouring of positive feedback to their boards, shareholders, and employees to sustain their new, responsible practices and promote more change.

That is why we want to urge every one of you to participate in our thank you action to Cadbury at this critical moment in time!
Please join Global Exchange and fellow members of our partner Fair Trade advocacy organizations nationwide and around the world in generating as many letters as possible to:
  • congratulate Cadbury on the Fair Trade certification of their Dairy Milk bar in the UK.
  • ask Cadbury, Hershey (Cadbury’s US manufacturer) and Green and Black’s Organic (owned by Cadbury) to expand their commitment to Fair Trade in the United States by introducing more Fair Trade Certified products.

So head over to >the Global Exchange action page and Thank Cadbury for their commitment and ask them and other large chocolate companies to commit to Fair Trade throughout their whole supply chain.


A few weeks ago, Cadbury announced their plans to use Fair Trade Certified cocoa in the summer of 2009 for their Cadbury Dairy Milk, which is the leading chocolate bar in the United Kingdom. This announcement is a significant victory for the Fair Trade movement as Cadbury is the first major chocolate company to certify one of their main products as Fair Trade. Various Fair Trade advocates, such as Global Exchange along with consumers like you have been working very hard to encourage major chocolate companies to take positive steps to respect human rights and environmental sustainability throughout their supply chains.

In hearing the announcment, Global Exchange along with the International Labor Rights Forum offered their congratulations to the chocolate company and encouraged major US chocolate companies to follow Cadbury’s lead. Global Exchange’s Fair Trade Campaign Director, Adrienne Fitch-Frankel said,

Cadbury’s Fair Trade announcement is an important victory for cocoa farmers, chocolate lovers, and grassroots Fair Trade advocates in the UK and around the world. We hope that Cadbury will extend its commitment to Fair Trade to all of its cocoa products sold in the UK and worldwide. After the remarkable leadership of 100% Fair Trade certified chocolate companies like Equal Exchange, Divine, and Alter Eco, Cadbury has proven that embracing Fair Trade is also both feasible and profitable for the major international chocolate brands. Cadbury’s is the first domino in the domino effect of major chocolate companies going Fair Trade. The tens of thousands of grassroots Fair Trade activists we work with, from young children to grandparents, are eagerly awaiting the day that we will savor our first Fair Trade certified Hershey’s bar, package of M&Ms, or World’s Finest Chocolate bar.

So, we congratulate Cadbury in their efforts to make positive changes and encourage them to expand their Fair Trade commitment to more of their chocolate lines in other countries including the United States.