Hershey’s Goes Beyond Chocolate
Hershey's is extending its Corporate Social Responsibility efforts to include more than just chocolate.
The Pennsylvania based confection maker has been working with organizations such as the World Cocoa Foundation and the International Cocoa Initiative to help ensure that cocoa farmers are treated fairly and that the crop is grown responsibly. They also signed the Harkin-Engel Protocol in 2001 that called for the end of child labor on cocoa farms by 2005.
Now shareholders are asking for more and the company is responding. Hershey's recently announced that they will evaluate their entire supply chain to make sure their other ingredients, such as sugar, dairy, nuts, and their product packaging are manufactured and produced responsibly.
Hershey's is also working with Verite, a non-profit human rights organization, and non-profit Business for Social Responsibility, to develop a supplier code. This code is like a social and environmental auditing process for their vendors, which will be transparent and available on the company's website.
Now, I'm not a Hershey's girl myself, but when a corporation like Hershey's (the largest manufacturer of chocolate and candy in the US with annual revenues of $5 billion) asks their suppliers to step up, the amount of positive change that will come out if it is huge.
And FYI - as of October of 2006, Hershey's owns the organic chocolate label Dagoba.
Via WBCSD; PR NewsWire; Hershey's
Tags: chocolate, corporate+social+responsibility, CSR, Fair Trade, Food, Hershey's
March 17th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
I’m not convinced that any of this is a “positive change” and you didn’t really explain any details of what is happening other than development of a “supplier code”. Big deal. Some family’s livelihood may be dependent on having a child work on a farm. And the whole idea behind “fair trade” seems like a sham to me. You take away lower paying jobs from 2 or 3 people (they now may not have any income) and pay a slightly higher wage to one person. The other result is that the sellers then have a new excuse to increase the markup on their product.
This is a marketing scheme to make US consumers feel good without actually doing much, if any, good.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
(disclaimer: our worker co-op, Equal Exchange, imports and sells chocolate, specifically 100% organic Fair Trade chocolate, and therefore is a competitor, albeit tiny, with Hershey’s)
James does not seem to understand how Fair Trade works. It does not take income away from, say, 3 people, so as to pay one person more. Rather it pays more to all 3 of those people (that is farmers and farm workers). Yes, this does cut into our profits, and does mean our chocolate can cost more, but when you get to down it, the farmers (who are barely scrapping by currently) need that little bit of extra money more than do chocolate companies like ours, or than does the average US consumer of premium chocolate.
Also, according to the Internation Labor Rights Fund “report card” (www.laborrights.org ) in February on the cocoa/chocolate industry Hershey got a failing grade. Yes, they did sign the Harkin-Engel protocol, but they then dragged their feet (along w/Nestle, Mars, Cargill, etc.) for the next 6 years. If you check out the powerful book “Bitter Chocolate” by Carole Off you’ll be shocked at just how little the large chocolate corporations have done on the child labor issue. Or, for the short version, see this new item from the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6517695.stm
September 29th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
[...] Why bother with any of them? Although Hershey’s has made attempts towards more fair trade practices, they’re far from green or ethical. There’s several other ways to get your [...]