BBC chocolate programme, The Bitter Truth

Thursday 8th April

We’re a little bit late with this one but if you watched Panorama: Chocolate, the Bitter Truth a couple of weeks ago on BBC1 then you’ll know that it had quite an impact. We thought it was, on the whole, a great programme for raising awareness and promoting the fact that consumers need to have take more responsibility for the food that they’re consuming and for it’s source. Reporter Paul Kenyon travelled to West Africa to investigate child labour in cocoa plantations and uncovered some unpleasant truths.

One of our favourite chocolatiers, Marc Demarquette was very involved in the programme, advising and educating presenter Paul Kenyon about fine quality chocolate and advocating ethical sourcing. Read his description of the programme here at the Demarquette website. There are also a few interesting articles on the subject at Trading Visions

One of the main issues is that chocolate doesn’t generally have a transparent supply chain and for large companies it’s difficult for them to regulate every stage of the process. We encourage consumers to find out a little more about the chocolate they’re buying and where the beans are from. Child labour is generally a problem in West Africa, not in other cocoa producing countries. If you’re buying from a mass market producer then please try to buy fairtrade chocolate. If you’re buying from an artisan chocolatier such as Marc Demarquette then he will be purchasing his chocolate from a quality chocolate maker who has bought top quality beans at a price well above market rate and has relationships with the plantations they buy from so you can be secure that there is no exploitation involved.

Unfortunately, the show is no longer on iplayer but I’m sure the BBC will be showing it again on BBC3. If you missed it there’s an overview here: BBC