Divine Chocolate USA Responds to Cadbury Announcement

Published March 04, 2009 @ 08:49PM PT

I received a note in my inbox from Erin Gorman, CEO of Divine Chocolate USA addressed to friends in the movement regarding the recent Cadbury announcement. Here are her words,

By now many of you will have seen Cadbury's announcement in the UK to convert some of the chocolate to Fair Trade. In many ways Divine Chocolate and Kuapa Kokoo have achieved something great today - we pioneered a market for Fair Trade chocolate and proved that you can create a market that is fair and works for cocoa farmers, that consumers will love, and that can transform the way trade is done. We are glad that Cadbury's is joining us on this journey.

Just think what could be possible for cocoa farmers if other chocolate companies took the challenge to go Fair Trade as well!

Thank you for your continued support of Divine Chocolate. We look forward to working with you as we continue to build a dynamic market for cocoa farmers and to continue to challenge the chocolate industry to participate in fair and sustainable ways of doing trade.

On Divine Chocolate's main website, they share their story of Divine's beginnings. The founding Divine team sat down ten years ago and wanted to make converting Cadbury to Fair Trade as one of their main objectives. They set this goal because they knew that Cadbury was (still is) such a chocolate behemoth in the UK, that by nudging them to follow Fair Trade principles, then it would be a great success for the movement and for the Ghanian cocoa farmers. Now, ten years later, Cadbury is starting to change their ways and Divine's objective is slowly being realized. Divine chocolate has been leading the Fair Trade path from the beginning, being the first farmer-owned chocolate company and now they have proven that they are able to lead the path to get bigger chocolate companies to see the Fair Trade way.

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Author

Zarah is the Operations Manager for the Global Exchange Fair Trade Online Store, a project of the international human rights organization, Global Exchange. Alongside her work with marginalized communities from all over the world to get their products into the international market, Zarah serves to educate and inform the public about a more just and sustainable trading system.