Easter eggs, whether for children or adults, can be full of hidden surprises, as well as any treats inside them. And some of the surprises may not be so good. This includes child labour, poor workers' rights, animal ingredients and palm oil.
In this guide we highlight some of the major issues associated with chocolate and Easter eggs to help you find the ethical alternatives to suit your budget and tastes.
We have included two supermarkets - Co-op and Waitrose - because they came top in our supermarkets guide and all of their chocolate is Fairtrade certified.
The big chocolate companies are Mars, Nestlé and Mondelez. Nestlé's brands have the name 'Nestlé' prominently on the front of their packaging, as do Mondelez's main brands Cadbury and Green & Black's.
The name Mars is not so prominent on packaging however. Chocolate brands by Mars include: Bounty, Celebrations, Galaxy, Hotel Chocolat, Maltesers, Mars, M&Ms, Milky Way, Snickers, Twix, and Skittles.
Cadbury Creme Egg is the best selling Easter egg in the UK but it comes bottom of our scoretable because of its poor corporate social responsibility.
Problems with cocoa production
Cocoa can only be grown in tropical countries, and it is almost entirely grown by smallholders. The bulk of production is in West Africa, with Ivory Coast as the biggest exporter, and Ghana in second place.
But cocoa farmers receive barely any of the chocolate industry’s $100 billion revenue: estimates range between 6% and 11%. Up to 9 out of 10 Ghanaian and Ivory Coast cocoa farmers don’t earn a living income.
Moreover, cocoa farmers’ income is so low that it’s commonplace for them to rely on child labour. 4 in 10 cocoa-growing households in Ivory Coast are estimated to use child labour, and 6 in 10 in Ghana.
After cocoa beans are harvested (64% of the world’s beans are grown in Africa, 15% in South America and 13% in Asia), the majority are exported to international companies for the most profitable production stages: processing, packaging and retail. This means the profits are not felt in the country where the cocoa is grown.
What can consumers do about cocoa sourcing?
Buying Easter eggs from companies that are addressing child labour and wages for cocoa farmers is one of the most important things consumers can do.
That means only buying from companies that have good cocoa sourcing policies.
How do Easter egg brands score for their cocoa sourcing rating?
We considered a brand’s cocoa sourcing policy to be ‘adequate’ if 100% of their cocoa was:
- Certified by Rainforest Alliance and/or Fairtrade International or
- Better than Fairtrade, including payment of at least the Fairtrade premium or
- Value-added-at-source
The following were adequate: Cocoa Loco, Divine, Green & Black's, Guylian, Love Cocoa, Moo Free, Ombar, Tony's Chocolonely, and Waitrose.
Brands that didn’t meet these criteria were considered to have an ‘inadequate’ cocoa sourcing policy and lost half a mark in the Workers’ Rights category. The majority of brands’ cocoa sourcing ratings were inadequate, including all the big well-known brands like Cadbury's and Nestle.
If you are wondering why Booja Booja scores highly in the table but is not one of our recommended brands, it's because its cocoa, although organic, was not certified.
Value-added-at-source Easter eggs
Value-added-at-source (VAS) chocolate is chocolate that was manufactured in the same country that the cocoa beans were grown in, meaning more profits stay inside the cocoa-growing country. We couldn't find any companies that sold value-added-at-source Easter eggs in the UK.
