Bitter Truths About Chocolate - No 2

Enjoying that Kit-Kat? Well stop because it's made of monkey fingers ! OK. It isn't really. But it might as well be according to Greenpeace.

Greenpeace learned that Nestle was dragging its heels on a promise it (and every other chocolate company) had made to stop using palm oil (a substance used in place of cocoa butter). Palm oil is produced by plantation owners who clear vast amounts of rainforest, endangering the Sumatran tigers, orangutans and rhinoceroses that live there.

Flipping off Mother Nature just that extra little bit, these particular rainforests sit on peat bogs, which release tons of carbon into the atmosphere when disturbed. Just these deeds, plus some pressure from Internet groups, made most chocolate companies, like Cadbury, immediately begin to phase out their business dealings in Malaysia and Indonesia.

The fact that these plantations were also accused of using slaves, stealing land and outright murdering people is barely mentioned in the little bit of media covering this issue. Of course, Nestle has been dealing with slave labor to purchase cocoa for years, so it's doubtful they'd let a few brutal human rights violations elsewhere get in the way of business.

And it hasn't. Just last year, Nestle was discovered buying milk from farms owned by Grace Mugabe, wife of Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe. To give you some context here, Mugabe once expressed a desire to " be a Hitler tenfold."

Grace Mugabe [aka The First Shopper in Zimbabwe] a woman who has spent millions on foreign shopping trips while her own people suffer ridiculous poverty, lives in a sprawling home dubbed Gracelands and has a jet once owned by Playboy tycoon Hugh Hefner.She once beat the hell out of a Times photographer (because he was taking pictures of her lavish spending), she runs these farms like you might expect: Terribly.

Asked why she spends thousands on Ferragamo shoes while her people starved, she replied simply: "I have very narrow feet, so I wear only Ferragamo."


Workers are paid 40 dollars a month, can't afford the milk they help to produce and don't have electricity in the houses provided by the business. Also bad, the farms themselves were basically stolen, back in 2003, from the original owners after months of violence and intimidation by the Mugabe regime. The United States, Canada and the EU all have trade sanctions against Grace Mugabe. Nestle, however, is based in Switzerland, which isn't part of the EU, so they don't have to give a rat's ass.

One month after Nestle's relationship with the Mugabes came to light, Nestle pulled out of Zimbabwe, citing international pressure. The fact that Mugabe's thugs had begun harassing Nestle workers was just a wacky coincidence, wacky events being expected when you're working in the candy industry.