Raise the Bar, Hershey! Take Some Sweet Valentine's Day Action

It's almost Valentine's Day, and Hershey's chocolates are everywhere you turn. Over nine years since chocolate companies committed to ending child labor, forced labor, and trafficking in their cocoa supply chains, these egregious labor-rights abuses continue — and Hershey is lagging behind.

While many chocolate companies have taken steps to trace their cocoa purchasing, implement labor-rights standards among their suppliers, and introduce some fair-trade-certified product lines, Hershey doesn't have much to show for itself. The company — which surely can afford to — has no policies in place to trace its cocoa and protect workers and is still declining to take steps to curb such abuses in its supply chain.

In honor of Valentine's Day and in accordance with our work on fair trade and ethical eating, UUSC is supporting the "Raise the Bar, Hershey!" campaign, spearheaded by our allies Global Exchange, the International Labor Rights Forum, Green America, and Oasis USA. You can support the campaign with these simple steps:

• Learn more about the campaign and its specific demands of Hershey.
• Send a "valentine" to Hershey's CEO to let the nation's biggest chocolate company know that we oppose continued use of chocolate that hasn't been certified to be free from the worst forms of abusive child labor.  
• Organize a screening of The Dark Side of Chocolate, a documentary that exposes the truth about child labor and trafficking in the cocoa industry.