For many people, myself included, Lent begins and ends with chocolate. On Ash Wednesday we decide, with some difficulty admittedly, to give it up for forty days. Then on Easter Sunday we celebrate its return with Easter eggs for breakfast. We assume that this small act of self-denial is pleasing to God. But is it?
That question becomes harder when we look at what lies behind a typical bar of chocolate. The global cocoa industry is widely associated with exploitative labour practices, including child labour. In Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, which together produce over 60% of the world’s cocoa, an estimated 1.6 million children work on cocoa farms. This work is badly paid and hazardous. Moreover, when their poor families require them to harvest cocoa with a machete, these children cannot go to school.
Children are paying the price
Statistics can feel abstract, but the reality is not. This short report from CBS News gives a sense of the cost that children typically pay to provide us with cheap chocolate:
The uncomfortable truth is that much of the chocolate we consume is relatively cheap because someone else, and somebody much poorer than us, is paying the price. Our bargain is their poverty and our pleasure is their pain.
Despite growing public pressure, the large chocolate and confectionary multinationals have been deliberately slow to address these serious injustices within their supply chains. I cannot see how any informed Christian or morally serious person can continue to buy their chocolate, whether it be Lent or not.
Thankfully, there is another way
In recent years, a growing number of chocolate producers have started doing things differently. Chocolate with the Fairtrade mark indicates that farmers receive a better price for their cocoa. Higher prices have also be achieved through small farmer cooperatives that strengthen their bargaining power. Better prices mean better conditions for farm workers, better care of the land, and the possibility of children attending school more frequently.
Some companies have gone further, moving from “fair trade” to what is sometimes called “fair chain.” Instead of exporting raw cocoa to be processed elsewhere, they produce chocolate in the countries where it is grown. This helps create skilled jobs locally and ensures that more of the value remains with the communities who produce the cocoa in the first place.
Others are pushing for deeper and wider reform: greater transparency, higher standards, and legal enforcement across the entiore chocolate industry. These companies are not merely content to be the more ethical alternative — they want unethical chocolate to be illegal.
Is God pleased?
So is God pleased when we give up chocolate for Lent? Before we attempt an answer, let us recall the words of the Prophet Isaiah:
“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free…”
If we give up chocolate without questioning how it is produced, we miss the Prophet’s point. The fast he describes is not merely about abstaining from nice things, but disentangling ourselves from persistent injustices.
And if we discover that the chocolate we consume is the result of exploitation, then the appropriate Christian response is not temporary abstinence for 40 days, but the permanent and more meaningful move from unethical to ethical chocolate. A simple internet search for ‘ethical chocolate comparison’ will reveal the the virtuous brands to buy and the villainous brands to boycott. Spoiler alert — if it is big, it is probably bad.
So from this day forward I say boycott the bad, and once Lent is over be sure to buy the good. It will taste divine.
