Today, many of us will be celebrating Valentine’s Day. It’s estimated that about 50% of us will do it with candy–and that probably means chocolate.

The Love Drug

On this day of love, nothing quite says “I love you” like chocolate, and lots of it. Its texture seduces. Its taste comforts all ills. There’s a reason it’s called the “love drug.”

If you close your eyes, you can almost taste it. Chocolate is creamy, sensual, sweet, dark, seductive, and…bittersweet.

Now open your eyes.

Chocolate’s Bittersweet Story

About 284,000 West African children work on cocoa farms. These children are known as “chocolate slaves” because they are exposed to harmful chemicals, suffer from workplace injuries, and should be in school–not out working.

Most of these farmers live in poverty, and poverty breeds unlawful child labor.

According to the European Fair Trade Association, these farmers get a meager 5% profit from their work while the chocolate industries receive about a 70% profit.

The industry is making an effort to change, but the cocoa initiative that was designed to alleviate the effects of poverty hasn’t worked. Goals haven’t been met. Governments haven’t become any less corrupt. People are still suffering.

What’s a Chocolate Lover to Do?

Americans have a love affair with chocolate, so much that they eat 3.3 billion pounds of it and spend $13 billion on it in a year.

While solutions like “child-labor free” package labeling could actually hurt the farmers, there are ways that you as a consumer can show them some love.

How You Can Help

• Make a call. Write a letter. Send a fax. Encourage buyers to buy their cocoa beans from farms that have been certified as fair trade.

• Buy fair-trade chocolate. Right now, fair-trade chocolate only accounts for about 1% of all chocolate globally. You can change that.

• Be the squeaky wheel. Ask suppliers to carry fair-trade chocolate. And keep asking.

• If you can, teach. If you’re a K-6 educator (or know one), you have the opportunity to teach children about fair trade using a fair-trade cocoa curriculum.

• Slip a little something in those valentine cards. Include fair-trade chocolate inserts.

Like chocolate, quality is better than quantity. An entire box of popular can’t even come close to one square of the best. Your efforts, no matter how small, matter.

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