TRNS Interview: Activists Target Hershey This Halloween

Human rights and labor rights activists don’t want just any chocolate this Halloween. They want fair trade chocolate.

Dressed in Hazmat suits and Darth Vader costumes, Raise the Bar, Hershey!, a coalition working against child labor in the chocolate industry, sent Hershey headquarters a petition with more than 100,000 signatures today asking for the company to use fair-trade chocolate.

Elizabeth O’Connell, the Fair Trade Campaign Director at Green America, told TRNS that the request is far from unreasonable, explaining that Mars along with the UK branches of Nestle and Cadbury have each taken steps to certify their cocoa as fair trade.

“The fact that these big companies are able to do it makes me think that Hershey can do it soon,” O’Connell said.

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