Tony’s Chocolonely removed from slave-free chocolate list: what’s going on?
The Dutch chocolate company Tony’s Chocolonely has been removed by the compilers of an international list of slave-free chocolate producers from this ‘Slave Free Chocolate’ list. The American certification body says that, through its collaboration with the Swiss chocolate giant Barry Callebaut, Tony’s is helping to maintain a tainted supply chain.
This is obviously a major blow for Tony’s. What lies behind this decision, and how is the company responding—the company that surprises us several times a year with its special bars and seems steadily to be building a growing empire of responsible chocolate?
Multi-billion-dollar industry
In an industry with an annual turnover of more than one hundred billion euros and six million people working in it, Barry Callebaut is the world’s largest chocolate producer. Its factories are also where Tony’s pays to have its cocoa mass and butter processed into chocolate. Callebaut acknowledges that its own chocolate is not free from slave or child labor, making it one of the global chocolate giants that still produces chocolate on a massive scale in shady and often inhumane ways. We previously wrote about the abuses in the cocoa industry and how it is now truly up to the biggest players in the cocoa world to produce those bars we seem unable to live without in a much fairer way. The organization behind Slave Free Chocolate does acknowledge, incidentally, that Tony’s beans themselves are one hundred percent traceable.
Keep your hands off my beans
Returning to that production chain: Tony’s consciously chose to have its bars manufactured by Callebaut since its founding in 2005. As far as they are concerned, traceability—and the transparency Tony’s does stand for—is the guiding principle here: all their beans come from cocoa farmers and other parties in the chain that they can monitor, and they intervene when they spot abuses. Their beans are therefore kept completely separate from Callebaut’s and processed separately.
Growth potential
Tony’s says it wants to demonstrate that change is indeed possible on a large production scale. Yes, there are abuses, but through full traceability they also try to resolve them on the ground, often successfully. According to Paul Schoenmakers, head of ‘impact’, by working with Callebaut in one factory they want to “prevent our model from being dismissed as something only a niche player can do… and instead show that within that complex chain, you can have one hundred percent traceability. Our model is scalable.”
We think it is unfortunate for Tony’s that this news has been picked up with an accusatory slant. After all, the company never claims to do everything perfectly, but at least speaks out and is open about where the problem lies. “Last year we found 387 cases of illegal child labor and were able to remedy 221 of them directly.” Their mission is therefore ‘the pursuit of 100 percent slave-free chocolate’. Read Tony’s Chocolonely’s full response here.
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Sources: NOS, Volkskrant
