Is Nutella as sweet as it seems?

Nutella is creamy hazelnut spread that millions of families have enjoyed for breakfast for years. It is acclaimed for its sweet and smooth taste but one day as I was eating it I wondered, how is this tasty treat made? So I started to dig around online and found some interesting things. I started off on the Nutella website and found that.

Nutella is produced by a brand named Ferrero that originiated out of Italy in the 1940s becaue of the shortage of cocoa beans. Since then Nutella has flourished and can be found all over the world. On the Ferrero website it has a list of ethical business and food ingredient promises which are as follows:

Ethical Source of Cocoa: Ferrero is involved in working towards the economic and social development of the world's cocoa farming communities, as well towards a supply chain free of forced child and adult labour.

Ferrero participates in the common industry commitment established in 2001 under the Harkin-Engel Protocol, aimed at developing standards for certification that cocoa beans and their derivates have been grown and processed without any of the worst forms of child labour.

Ferrero is a participant of ICI, the International Cocoa Initiative, indirectly up to 2006 and a direct member starting in 2007. Furthermore, through the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF), Ferrero works towards improving the well being of cocoa farming communities.

Palm oil: Ferrero has been a member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) since 2005. RSPO was created in 2004 by organisations involved in the supply chain of palm oil, to promote the growth and use of sustainable palm oil through co-operation within the supply chain and its stakeholders. For more information see rspo.org.

FERRERO also participated in the recent Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC).

(http://www.nutella.com.au/company/ethics/)

I wanted to look more into each of these subjects. Regarding Child labor Ferrero claims that they try to grow and process their cocoa beans without the worst forms of child labor. However hazelnuts are one of the main ingredients of Nutella and the conditions in which they are harvested is atrocious riddled with child labor with rigorous 12 hour day’s work with only an hour break and an earning of one euro an hour. Ferrero is the number one buyer of hazelnuts in the global community and 75% of the world’s hazelnuts come from Turkey. Ferrero admits to using Turkish hazelnuts. On their website Ferrero claims that “cocoa beans and their derivates have been grown and processed without any of the worst forms of child labour “ However does not say anything about the conditions in which their hazelnuts are being grown and produced and the conditions in which hazelnuts are harvested in Turkey go against their website’s claim. “Research by the Turkish education union Egitim Sen (a member of Education International) shows that many children are missing three to six months of education every year, even though Turkey has a law for eight years of compulsory education. Children work along with their parents in harvesting hazelnuts. The families are living in poverty. During the harvesting season the parents and their children are living in tents in make-shift camping sites, often without sanitation or running water.” (http://www.stopchildlabour.eu/stopchildlabour/English/News/articles/Bitter-Hazelnuts-Stop-Child-Labour-urges-companies-to-transparency-and-action)

Ferrero also boasts in its association with the RSPO to promote sustainable Palm Oil use. This seems to be an encouraging and “eco-friendly” answer to the deforestation due to palm oil use however many organizations no longer recognize the RSPO as being legitimate. In March of 2010 a briefing about the RSPO came out exposing its many flaws. (http://www.wrm.org.uy/publications/briefings/RSPO.pdf) Even stating that the RSPO certification is a fraud because the criteria in which the companies must abide by are flexible in interpretation and not all necessary to follow as well as the claim that palm oil can be sustainable (even within the impact of large-scale oil palm monocultures). Also in November 2009 an open letter was sent to RSPO and WWF from numerous different organizations it said “We are deeply concerned that RSPO certification is being used to legitimize an expansion in the demand for palm oil and thus in oil palm plantation, and it serves to greenwash the disastrous social and environmental impacts of the palm oil industry. The RSPO standards do not exclude clear cutting of many natural forests, the destruction of other important ecosystems, nor plantings on peat. The RSPO certifies plantations which impact on the livelihoods of local communities and their environments. The problems are exacerbated by the in-built conflict of interest in the system under which a company wanting to be certified commissions another company to carry out the assessment.”

After gathering this information I ask myself the question why? Why do companies choose child labor over dignified working conditions? Why do companies put on a mask of being concerned for the environment or actually being concerned but partner with organizations that do not live up to sustainable living standards? I believe it all comes down to profit. Businesses are in for the profit and so if they are able to get the same product from children working for a euro an hour than from an adult working in dignified conditions for 10 euro an hour the decision is simple. The connection of nation state system allows for the externalization of costs to function effectively for the profit of businesses. However this process runs on short term thinking for short term profit. If the RSPO can claim sustainable use of palm oil but have lenient criteria than companies can still participate in cheap deforestation and the consumer can have a happy conscience but in the future when all the land is deforested than the palm oil companies will fail. Long term sustainability is not thought of because the profit of the here and now blinds people and so the cheapest possible avenue to produce an item is used in order to gain the biggest profit.

Once I reflected on that I again began to ask myself a question of why does a company even claim to have these ethical guidelines to their company, why wouldn’t they just let the consumer continue to live in their ignorance? I think this is due to an awakening in society of a global conscience. I am an optimist that people are beginning to see the world around them and the need to protect the environment in order to ensure the livelihood of the coming generations. Therefore people are more concerned of the conditions in which the products they are consuming are made. Consequently it has become increasingly beneficial for companies to give the appearance of being “green”. Again, it is all for profit.

The stand in which consumers can take against companies destroying our environment is to be informed where our food is coming from. Each time we buy an item at the store we essentially are voting and saying that we approve of the conditions in which the product was produced and we give permission for it to continue in that way. By gaining knowledge about the food we eat we are able to make better decisions in what we “vote” for and perhaps one day revolutionize the way in which food is produced.