Written by: ECRA Bloggers 14/12/2009 16:50 

With growing commitments amongst mainstream chocolate manufacturers like Mars and Cadbury's to ethical certification of their cocoa supply chains, it was only a matter of time before Nestlé jumped on the bandwagon.

Last week, they announced that their Kit Kat bars (4 finger variety in UK and Ireland only) would carry the Fairtrade label from mid January 2010. Whilst it is encouraging to see some moves in the right direction, many campaigners remain unconvinced. Campaign group Baby Milk Action, which has led a boycott of Nestlé for its marketing in breast-milk substitutes, said it would keep Kit Kat on its list of products to avoid. Campaigns coordinator Mike Brady said: "We recommend that anyone who is concerned about promoting real change for people in developing countries support the boycott and buy products from companies with positive business values, not just token initiatives."

It is also instructive to note that Kit Kat is a product largely made of biscuit with a little bit of chocolate. Making a Fairtrade Yorkie bar would surely have meant committing to buying much more fairtrade cocoa?

At Ethical Consumer, Nestlé with its current ethiscore of zero, sits at the bottom of our chocolate suppliers ranking table. It's Fairtrade Kit Kat would score one point - moving it above Asda and Tesco's own brand chocolate, but there would still be many other better buys for ethical consumers. Our most recent chocolate report (EC 122) identified at least ten other Fairtrade chocolate brands and best buys were: Plamil, Vegan Organica, Traidcraft, Montezuma and Divine.

More detailed story headings from our ethiscore subscriber website - which go some way to explaining Nestlé's poor overall score - include:

Middle ECRA rating for environmental reporting

Climate change impacts of palm oil

Carbon dioxide emissions in the UK

Campaign against odour from London coffee plant

Subsidiary blacklisted for environmental violations in China

Palm oil supplier accused of rainforest destruction

Climate change impacts of palm oil

Failure to act on palm oil environmental threat

Animal Testing - Tests on dogs

Animal testing Worst ECRA rating for animal testing policy

Products containing meat not labelled as free range or organic

Product contained unexpected animal derived ingredients

Trade union leader assassinated

Nestlé worker and union leader killed in Colombia

Consolidation of water causing shortage for local peoples

Stop the Traffik campaign against child labour farmed cocoa

Compensation for tennis elbow injuries

Worst ECRA rating for supply chain policy

Boycott over baby milk marketing

Midwives taken on trip to HQ to promote infant feeding materials

Infringement of baby milk marketing code in 2006

Use of GM ingredients in food products

Russia - hiding GM and advertising chocolate to kids

Worst ECRA rating for GM policy

Boycott over baby milk marketing

Boycott call by Uncaged Boycott call for animal testing due to L'Oreal ownership

Member of USCIB lobby group

Operations in seven tax havens

Demanding money from war torn Iraq

Concerns over union busting, exploitation of farmers and marketing.

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