Chocolate central to fair trade celebration

Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate will flavour World Fair Trade Day in Masterton on Saturday.

Trade Aid Masterton is inviting everyone to a chocolate party to mark the global celebration of fair trade that will be echoed at Trade Aid stores throughout New Zealand on Saturday.

Trade Aid Masterton manager Brenda Lee said customers will be treated to a chocolate fountain, cake and competitions at the Queen St shop and there also will be several musicians providing in-store entertainment for the day.

"It's a celebration of the win-win aspect of fair trade that highlights the links between New Zealand consumers and the talented producers who make our products in developing countries around the world," she said.

Mrs Lee said the widespread prevalence of slavery and child labour on cocoa farms around the world meant New Zealanders "are not able to presume that the non-fair trade chocolate they buy is a slave-free product".

"But when you purchase from a 100 per cent fair trade organisation you know that the cocoa farmers are also benefiting from the sale of their cocoa products."

The theme of the nationwide chocolate party relates to Trade Aid membership of the World Fair Trade Organisation (WFTO), which is restricted to those organisations that operate every part of their business according to a set of 10 principles agreed to by its members - the majority of which are producer organisations from across the developing world.

The theme also relates to the high quality of Trade Aid chocolate, Mrs Lee said.

In recent research conducted by Trade Aid, chocolate was the product that customers associated most with their recent Trade Aid purchasing.

The chocolate party in Masterton on Saturday will also introduce customers to a new range of chocolate manufactured for the first time in Trade Aid's home base of Christchurch, enabling farmers from the Dominican Republic to process their cocoa to a higher level before export and sharing to a greater degree in the final price paid.

Manufacturing the chocolate in Christchurch also enables Trade Aid to add quality fair trade ingredients from its sugar producers in Paraguay, almond growers in Palestine and spice producers in Sri Lanka to make up a range of five gourmet chocolate flavours, Mrs Lee said.

World Fair Trade Day is celebrated around the world each year by over 300 members of the WFTO.