In an effort to save money and better serve their brand image, some major companies are breaking from third-party certifiers, such as FairTrade and the Rainforest Alliance, and developing their own schemes for certifying which products meet standards of sustainability and ethics, reports Reuters.
Mondelez International, which owns the Cadbury and Toblerone chocolate brands, “started selling the first Green & Black’s chocolate in the UK without a Fairtrade logo in August, more than 23 years after the brand’s Maya Gold bar received Britain’s first mark,” says the wire service. “The bar instead carries the stamp of ‘Cocoa Life,’ a Mondelez scheme started in 2012 with broad goals including improved productivity, protection of fertile land, and gender equality in farming communities.”
Unilever and Barry Callebaut, the world’s biggest producer of chocolate and cocoa products, also have introduced their own certification efforts.
Critics, including some from third-party certifiers who stand to lose money, worry that taking the process in-house will mean less transparency and a confusing flood of labels for consumers. “Standards measuring environmental and social issues need to be transparent because, once this process happens behind closed doors, it is difficult to see how companies and farms apply them,” said Sloane Hamilton, labor rights policy advisor at Oxfam, a charity focused on alleviating poverty.
The companies say that consumers are more savvy, and wouldn’t stand for a lowering of the standards they have come to expect. “If you connect your name to it … then you want to make sure what you’re putting out there is absolutely credible,” said Christiaan Prins, head of external affairs for Barry Callebaut. “The consumer nowadays can no longer be tricked in any sense.”