CADBURY DAIRY MILK CHOCOLATE COMMODITY CHAIN

Ever wonder where the stuff we eat comes from? Ever sit back and think about how much of our daily food intake is imported? Imported, from where? Where do the things we eat actually come from? In this blog I am going to investigate where one of my favorite treats, a Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bar, comes from. I am a huge lover of chocolate but one of my all time favorites is indeed Cadbury Dairy Milk for its simple smooth taste. To illustrate where this tasty treat comes from I am going to create a commodity chain tracing all the natural ingredients found in Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate to their places of origin.

Knox and Marston (2007, 69-72) describe commodity chains as:

“Networks of labor production processes that originate in the extraction or production of raw materials and whose end result is the delivery and consumption of a finished commodity. These networks span countries and continents, linking into vast global assembly lines the production and supply of raw materials; the processing of raw materials; the production of components; the assembly of finished products; and the distribution of finished products.”

Brief History of Chocolate

According to Encyclopedia Britannica (2013) chocolate originated in Mexico in 1519 as a bitter cocoa drink and was taken back to Spain by the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. There it was sweetened and flavored and subsequently introduced to France where in 1657 a solid chocolate for making the beverage was developed and sold for 10 to 15 shillings per pound, making it a drink of the wealthy. Around the 1700’s the English improved chocolate by the addition of milk. Due to high import duties on the raw cocoa bean the beverage remained expensive up until the mid-19^th century when duty was lowered to one penny per pound.

  Meanwhile, the making of chocolate spread overseas and grew in sophistication. Chocolate manufacture started in the American colonies in 1765 at Dorchester, Massachusetts, using beans brought in by New England sea captains from their voyages to the West Indies. In the Netherlands in 1828, C.J. van Houten patented a process for pressing much of the fat, or cocoa butter, from ground and roasted cocoa beans and thus obtaining cocoa powder. In 1847 the English firm of Fry and Sons combined cocoa butter with chocolate liquor and sugar to produce eating, or sweet, chocolate (the base of most chocolate confectionary), and in 1876 Daniel Peter of Switzerland added dried milk to make milk chocolate. The proliferation of flavored, solid, and coated chocolate foods rapidly followed (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2013).

Now that we have an idea of where chocolate comes from let’s look at a brief history of Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate.  

The following is a time line adapted from the Cadbury webpage: https://www.cadbury.co.uk/the-story

·         John Cadbury opened a grocery shop in 1824 where he sold cocoa and drinking chocolate which he prepared himself.

·          The Cadbury manufacturing business was born in 1831, when John Cadbury decided to start producing on a commercial scale and bought a four-storey warehouse.

·         The turning point for the Cadbury business was the introduction of a new processing technique, resulting in the 1866 launch of 'Cadbury Cocoa Essence', the UK's first unadulterated cocoa.

·         In 1875, a Swiss manufacturer called Daniel Peter added milk to his recipe to make the first milk chocolate bar.

·         When Cadbury started making Cocoa Essence they had lots of cocoa butter left over, so they used it to make bars of chocolate.

·         Swiss manufacturers were leading the field in milk chocolate, with much better products than their rivals. In 1904, George Cadbury Jr was given the challenge to develop a milk chocolate bar with more milk than anything else on the market.

·         Cadbury Dairy Milk started out in pale mauve with red script, in a continental style 'parcel wrap’ at its launch in 1905. The full Dairy Milk range became purple and gold in 1920.

·         In January 2008, Cadbury launched the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership. £45 million was put aside to put into cocoa farms in Ghana, India, Indonesia and the Caribbean over a decade.

·         The move to Fairtrade has the impact of tripling the sales for cocoa farmers in Ghana under Fairtrade terms, both increasing Fairtrade cocoa sales for existing certified farming groups, as well as opening up new opportunities for thousands more farmers to benefit from the Fairtrade system (www.cadbury.co.uk ,2014).

Source: www.cadbury.co.uk/products/Dairy-Milk-2360?p=2360

The ingredients in a Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate Bar are:

·         Milk

·         Sugar

·         Cocoa butter

·         Cocoa mass

·         Vegetable fat

·         Emulsifiers ( E422, E476)

·         Flavorings

For my commodity chain I will be looking at only natural ingredients which will include milk, cocoa butter and cocoa mass.

MILK

Cadbury states on its web site (www.cadbury.co.uk ) that the milk used in its Dairy Milk Chocolate comes from the British Isles. According to the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and Rural Payments Agency UK (2012), “Dairy farming is the single largest agricultural sector in the UK, accounting for around 17% of UK agricultural production by value”.

SUGAR

According to Conor Woodman (2013) the company Tate and Lyle is responsible for supplying sugar to the Cadbury factory. “The sugar market in the UK is a market of two halves. Half of our sugar is imported exclusively by Tate and Lyle from Less Developed Countries that were once part of the Commonwealth such as Mauritius and Belize. This sugar comes in by ship and is refined at Tate and Lyle’s refinery on the Thames in East London, one of the world’s largest refineries” (Woodman 2013).

Tate and Lyle Sugars provides the following information on its website (http://www.tateandlylesugars.com/cane-story) about the various subheadings.

Fairtrade;

 “Tate & Lyle Sugars is proud to support the Fairtrade initiative. In order to ensure that the Fairtrade premium is supporting our growers in the best possible way, a member of our team is dedicated to our relationship with Fairtrade. All of our retail sugars are offered as Fairtrade, helping over 6000 farming families in the developing world” (Tate and Lyle Sugars, 2012).

Sugar Cane Sources;

“One of the countries from which we source our raw sugar is Belize in Central America. This is where the first Tate & Lyle sugar to be given the Fairtrade accreditation came from. Farmers plant a segment of a sugar cane and, depending on the quality of the soil and the care taken, they can expect to harvest for between three to ten years” (Tate and Lyle Sugars, 2012).

Transport;

“Our European refineries receive cargoes of raw cane sugar from tropical countries around the world. The sugar is transported in large vessels; the cargoes can be as large as 42,000 tonnes, which is enough to make more than 40 million 1kg packets of sugar! Once the raw sugar arrives at one of the refineries, it is offloaded using large ‘grab cranes’ – in London, the sugar is transferred directly from vessels that arrive alongside the refinery using our own cranes at our berth on the River Thames” (Tate and Lyle Sugars, 2012).

Social and environmental conditions associated with sugar cane production in Belize according to The Fairtrade foundation (2011):

 “Sugar cane has been grown by many generations of farmers in the north of Belize, where the prevailing conditions make it the most suitable high-production crop. The sugar industry is an important socio-economic factor in Belize, providing significant employment, foreign exchange earnings, and rural stability. Poverty levels of around 30% of the population in the sugar belt are relatively low due to the incomes and employment generated by the sugar industry, which also finances housing, education, health and recreational activities through a welfare fund. The industry is facing an uncertain future as a result of changes to the international trade in sugar. The EU is making fundamental reforms to its trading partnerships and slashing the reference price paid for sugar from African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, with small-scale farmers having to compete for markets with large-scale, low-cost producers around the world. In response, the industry is implementing reforms to improve efficiency, while the partnership with Fairtrade will mean a more secure future for the members of BSCFA and their families.”

COCOA

In the article ‘Cadbury to protect Ghana's cocoa industry’ written in The Telegraph (Jan 2008), Jonathan Sibun states that Cadbury imports 70 per cent of its cocoa beans from Ghana. According to the Fairtrade Foundation (2011), “Kuapa Kokoo is a cocoa-growing co-operative set up in 1993 in response to the partial liberalization of the cocoa sector in Ghana. It is the only farmer-owned organization among the private companies that have been granted government licenses to trade cocoa”. The Fair Trade Foundation (March 2010) also describes the social context of cocoa grown in Ghana to be;

“…predominantly smallholders living in remote and deprived parts of the country. Most of the cocoa growing villages do not have access to healthcare, clean drinking water, or electricity and rely on kerosene for artificial light. Most villages lack basic schools, educational materials, and teachers. High illiteracy rates are improving with the introduction of the government’s free compulsory basic education program. The average farm is 4 hectares with around 3 hectares under cocoa, which accounts for virtually 100% of farmers’ cash income. The farms are family-run but larger farms sometimes employ seasonal labour. Some farmers grow plantain, coco yam, cassava and vegetables for home consumption and plantain, oranges and palm fruits for sale at local markets. But the soil in many cocoa farms is too poor to grow vegetables and other food crops so they must be bought in at extra cost. Transporting cocoa and other crops is hampered by unreliable transport and the lack of access roads. Apart from free basic education, farmers must contribute to social services such as healthcare and secondary education. Farmers are very concerned about having to employ expensive casual labour to help with weeding and harvesting because of the decrease in family labour as young people in particular are increasingly migrating to towns looking for a better life.”

Source: ://www.cadbury.com.au/about-cadbury/fairtrade.aspx

FAIRTRADE

In all of these ingredients the term ‘fairtrade’ is mentioned, so what is fairtrade?

According to Fairtrade International’s website (http://www.fairtrade.net/),Fairtrade is, “an alternative approach to conventional trade and is based on a partnership between producers and consumers. Fairtrade offers producers a better deal and improved terms of trade. This allows them the opportunity to improve their lives and plan for their future. Fairtrade offers consumers a powerful way to reduce poverty through their every day shopping.”

The certification process is briefly described on their website (http://www.fairtrade.net/),

“No producer organization can become certified without an initial on-site inspection. Many Fairtrade producer organizations are large, including hundreds and sometimes thousands of farmers. This makes it impossible for the auditor to visit every single farm. Accordingly FLO-CERT operates a ‘group certification’ model. This includes the audit of the producer organization itself as well as random checks of a representative sample of individual farmers.”

There are also follow up inspections done in three year increments, “After they receive their initial Fairtrade certification, producers are inspected on-site on an annual basis. In some circumstances, where organizations have demonstrated excellent compliance over many years, they may qualify for a ‘desk-top’ review as part of a three year inspection cycle.”

The Fairtrade Foundation Logo, source: http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/

The Fairtade logo can be seen on every package of Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate. Cadbury (2014) states that the Fairtrade label shows “that a product is Fairtrade Certified” and this label is “an easy way for consumers to recognise and choose products that have met internationally agreed Fairtrade Standards.”

The above image is a map I created to illustrate the Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate commodity chain showing the raw materials, the production of the raw materials and the distribution of the finished product.

To me Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate is most memorable for its distinct purple packaging. I cannot wait to rip open a packaged chocolate bar and devour the silky smooth treat. I pay very little attention to what is actually said on the wrapper, I must admit not until starting my research did I closely inspect the wrapper. I noticed the fair trade label and the ‘glass and a half of milk’ image. There is no reference to Ghana or Belize on the wrapper, I mean, why would there be? Chocolate comes from the supermarket right? It just appears there for us to consume. These may have been my thoughts before this research blog but now my view on what I eat and where it really comes from is changed.

Eating chocolate as a snack can be a real luxury, something that you usually indulge in, not something that is eaten every day. Eating energy rich foods such as chocolate in large amounts can lead to obesity. Obesity is generally a lifestyle disease generally associated with the developed world. The chocolate we eat is getting us fat while the places that source the ingredients people are suffering from under nutrition. Do they even consume any of the chocolate that without them we would not have? These are things we take for granted when we bite into our chocolate bars. We don’t think about the sugar cane farmer in Belize or the family working on their cocoa plantation in Ghana.

Now, however, with the introduction of the Fairtrade logo on the Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate wrapper we can feel a sense of comfort that the ingredients used in manufacturing our luxurious snack is indeed coming from a Fairtrade certified source and in some little way we can “reduce poverty through everyday shopping”.     

References:

Cadbury.2014. “About Cadbury Fairtrade”. Accessed April 10, 2014. https://www.cadbury.com.au/about-cadbury/fairtrade.aspx. 

Cadbury. 2014. “The Story”. Accessed April 9, 2014. https://www.cadbury.co.uk/the-story.

Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and Rural Payments Agency, Food and Farming. September 5, 2012. Accessed April 11, 2014.  https://www.gov.uk/dairy-farming-and-schemes.

Encyclopedia Britannica. 2014. “Chocolate”. Last updated December 13, 2013. Accessed April 9, 2014. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/113885/chocolate.

Fairtrade Foundation. 2011. “Kuapa Kokoo Union” Accessed April 10, 2014. http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/producers/cacao/kuapa_kokoo_union.aspx.

Fairtrade Foundation. 2011. “ What is Fairtrade?” Accessed April 10, 2014. http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/what_is_fairtrade/default.aspx

Knox, Paul L. Sallie A. Marston.2007.  Human Geography Places and Regions in Global Context. Fourth Edition. New Jersey. Pearson Education Inc.

Sibun, Jonathan. “Cadbury to Protect Ghana’s Cocoa Industry.” The Telegraph UK, January 27^, 2008. Accessed April 10, 2014. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/2783373/Cadbury-to-protect-Ghanas-cocoa-industry.html.

Tate and Lyle Sugars. 2012. “Responsibility Ethical-sourcing”. Accessed April 11, 2014. http://www.tateandlylesugars.com/responsibility/ethical-sourcing.

Tate and Lyle Sugars. 2012. “The Cane Story”. Accessed April 11, 2014.  http://www.tateandlylesugars.com/cane-story.