A recent article from EHS Today highlights some of the controversy surrounding Hershey Co. and its social irresponsibility.

Fair trade organizations Green America, Global Exchange and the International Labor Rights Forum have published a report criticizing Hershey for using forced, trafficked, and child labour in its production of chocolate, and claim that Hershey has fallen behind its competitors in improving their ethical standards.

Meanwhile, Hershey Corporate Social Responsibility Report  funded various initiatives such as CocoaLink, which provides information to cocoa farmers to help improve their livelihoods and ameliorate the problems of poor labour conditions, and ECHOES, which provides education in practical issues to young people in West Africa.

“It’s increasingly clear that consumers care where the products they buy are from and how they were made,” said Elizabeth O’Connell from Green America. Thus, if there is truth in the report condemning Hershey, this idea should serve as extra incentive to Hershey to make more genuine efforts to improve the labour situation rather than fund tertiary social programs. This is where the interests of both customers and corporation may lie in the same direction, the importance of which has been so greatly stressed by R. Edward Freeman.