A Day of Chocolate and Dessert Wine
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I love eating but I am not very fond of sweets. This is true for chocolates too as surprising as that may sound. 
Yesterday we attended a talk on chocolate at COPIA in Napa. The speaker was Robert Steinberg, co-founder of Berkeley-based fine chocolate maker, Scharffen Berger. The beginning part of the session was dry. Then, it got interesting when the sampling plate was brought to the table. This plate consisted of chocolates of varying cacao strength from Milk (41%) to Dark (82%). We also tasted chocolate nibs (the roasted cacao beans) and cacao powder. The nibs were very bitter but crunchy. I liked the crunchiness. As it turns out, Scharffen Berger does produce chocolates with nibs in it, called “Nibby Bar.” The milk chocolate, shunned by the purists (as is white chocolate), was the smoothest to eat.
From the talk, we learned some facts about chocolate. . .
- Chocolate is only grown in the tropics
- It originally came from Central and South America
- The word “chocolate” comes from the Aztec word xocolatl meaning bitter water
- White chocolate doesn’t contain any cocoa powder
- 1 pod of cacao bean produces about an ounce of chocolate
- nibs + cocoa butter + sugar + (milk) = chocolate
- Cacao plants can live 40-50 years
- Cacao is the plant whereas cocoa is the powder
Besides chocolate, we also tasted some dessert wine at COPIA. These wines were from Quady Winery in Madera. I loved their Black Muscat. It washed down the chocolate well.
Though we didn’t meet any chocolate sommeliers, it was fun to be a chocolate connoisseur for a day.
During the talk, an audience member raised the issue of child labor (and/or slavery) in the cacao farms of African countries such as the Ivory Coast. Apparently some human rights groups are suing or planning a lawsuit against the chocolate manufacturers who buy beans from them. Mr Steinberg skirted around the issue saying that it’s not easy for someone here to pass judgements on these things without actually observing up close these farms. I agree. Westerners are often quick to rush to judgement about the whole issue of child labor in my opinion.
Unlike eugenia, I love chocolate though the extra dark one was a bit too much to handle.
Agree. This goes beyond westerners and extends to those who mean well but rush to judgement. A ban on child labour cannot eradicate this problem - because (a) it can create a more severe problem by solving the problem of child labor (b) in some quarters it is not perceived as a problem.
For e.g. in Sivakasi, a region in Tamil Nadu renowned for the problem of child labor there are about 400 or so factories that make matches. Around 40 per cent of all matches are made in 6,000 cottage units, which often means families of 4-6 members working in homes. No laws (and there are laws in the books on primary education) can effectively prevent parents from making little kids work at home.
A harsh enforcement of the laws will increase cost of labor and hence the products and will only drive the jobs out of Sivakasi and into poorer districts willing to undertake this low paying high labor work. This in turn will drive these Sivakasi families where every member of the family working to support the entire family into abject poverty.
Abject poverty leads to a host of social problems with simple begging in the streets at one of the spectrum all the way to child-slavery and child-prostitution at the other end and everything in between.
Completely agree. Well said.
I am tried of people beating up every company that creates jobs in countries where the overall conditions are very grim to begin with.
During the industrial revolution in the US, children used to work in the mills and the mines. Now a few generations later, where do the same people get the right to impose their double standards on other countries.
What galls me even more is seeing Indians preach about child labour. There are a band of people (most women “social workers”) who go around terrorising families who keep minors as maids. What do they know about the real alternate lives these children would go through?
We have had minors as live-in maids for many years and I am very proud about it. Why? Because the girls come to our homes undernourished, retarded growth, unconfident, at the age of 12-14, which should otherwise been peak growth periods for them.
They come from homes where they hardly get one decent meal in a day. Being girls they are also the less favoured while the boys get most of the food and what other little luxuries the family can afford. They are also at an age where they are at high risk of being abused.
They come into our homes and blossom within months. They grow up, learn hygiene and develop skills which they can leverage through the rest of their lives. Some of our families even send the girls to vocational courses like stitching.
Their families use the money to put other siblings though school, which would have otherwise been impossible. The parents now have a source of income which can see them through lean months which otherwise would have seen them go into bondage from the money lenders.
At the state in which our country is at, child labour is a necessary good. If a company can make a child economically productive (within the limitations of what children can and should do) and improve standards everywhere, congratulate them and buy their products.
Only in our dear rantlust would a post about chocolate be turned into a discussion about child slavery. You go guys!
Now before I comment about this controversial topic, let me just say that I love chocolate more than most things in this world and the post brought a smile. I love all things chocolate, especially dark chocolate. Thank you, eugenia, for sharing this experience.
Back to the diversion:
While I agree that child labour is often necessary for certain peoples, we need to distinguish between responsible child labour and cruel child slavery. I think I might qualify as one of the ‘women social workers’ that crewcut so patronisingly dismisses.
For every child that lives a ‘decent’ life as a maid-servant there are hundreds of thousands who are under bondage, tortured, sexually abused, forced to fight unnecessary wars, subjected to excessive work hours, forced to work in hazardous conditions and so on. I agree with the premise that certain types of work make positive contributions to the development of a child and that they can sustain their families with the income thus generated. In various parts of Africa, things are much worse than in India, say. Even in India, you may not have abused your maid-servants but I am sure many people do. Children are very vulnerable to that sort of treatment.
Let’s not even start with the trafficking and child prostitution. In the Ivory Coast, the problem with the cacao farms is that most of the children working in these farms are trafficked with their families having little or no contact with them.
So, let’s not rush to judgement against those who protest these kinds of child endangerment. We need to qualify what we mean when we say we support child labour. And slavery should be a big no-no.
Valid points. No one wants to support slavery and if there is evidence to this effect, it has to be protested. My point was more the black listing of companies that take jobs to developing nations and the conditions are compared to conditions in the developed conditions. That just won’t work and in the process you take away a few meals from some very hungry people.
crewcut:
This is a specious argument. A few generations ago, there was slavery in the US. That doesn’t mean we don’t have the right to denounce it now. A few generations hence, there might be current societal ills which our descendents will denounce.
Another side to the child labor (as opposed to child slavery - an important distinction pointed out by reneejo, which frankly I was mixing up in my mind a little bit) issue is that there could well be many cases where the child’s long term future may be compromised.
Perhaps there are several borderline families which would get along a little worse off by sending their child to school, but having that job in hand is simply too tempting to pass up. In that case, it is not really a win-win situation for company and family alike - it could be a long term lose situation for the family. For short term gain, the child gives up school. I doubt these companies do much to encourage the kids going to school.
The finer point I want to make is that these discussions are very valuable, but tend to veer towards dealing with groups as a whole (I’ll be the first to admit guilt) and we sometimes forget that there are individual stories here. I often get discouraged by the enormity of these problems and have to keep reminding myself that while some of us have both the ability and desire to make larger scale changes, others among us could help in much smaller ways.
If you haven’t already, you should consider sponsoring one (or more) of these children. We have sponsored a little boy for a few years now. His family (who I think falls in the aforementioned borderline category) gets support in taking care of him, but on the flip side they have to keep sending him to school. So the temptation to send him off to work is reduced (though of course I can’t guarantee that his parents are not doing that anyway).
Clearly these are arm-chair social workers and do not have a good grasp of the problem. The women I know as fulltime or part-time social-workers (most of them in India) are extremely knowledgeable and have a lot of empathy to the parents and the children. Indeed I have learnt a lot from them.
Fellow blogger anupcs and I are actively involved in one such effort for over a year. One of us will take some time to blog about this soon. We currently have more than 200 kids benefiting as a result of our work and contributions.
Have you ever seen the boy and his parents face-to-face? Are you doing this via some organization or is the family known to you? I often thought about this and did in fact used to send small amounts of money to my mom to do the needful. I wasn’t getting satisfaction from this because I didn’t know how the money was being put to use. It was then that I joined the effort that riyer mentions. It seems a worthwhile cause and there is a physical location where the kids go to learn and such.
No we have not met the family face to face, though they have sent pictures. We get occasional letters from the boy and from his teachers (who actually translate from his native Kannada to English for us to read). Yes, as you have guessed it is through an organization.
Perhaps it is time for you either you or riyer to provide a more detailed blog of your efforts.
A detailed blog can be written once we have the website up and running. It’s still in the design stage even though the content is ready. It should be up in the next month or so. One of us will provide more details. The people who run this show are known to riyer and are based in Bangalore. They have facilities in which children can go and learn. riyer can provide more of the tidbits.