Postcard: Tony’s Chocolonely in Amsterdam

At Marqt, Amsterdam's answer to Whole Foods, we came upon an enormous end-cap display of Tony's Chocolonely. The line was launched in 2005 by chocoholic journalist Teun Van de Keuken, from Dutch television's Inspection of Value, a show that examines the production chain of foods and other consumer goods. Keuken's expose on Ivory Coast cocoa farms, suppliers of most of the world's beans, uncovered the use of forced and child labor. In response, first Keuken turned himself into Dutch police as a "chocolate criminal," for consuming a food produced under conditions that violate Dutch law. Then he started a confection company with a commitment—if not, at this point, a guarantee—to use chocolate from sources that are 100-percent free of slave labor. (As Tony's discovered, even Fair Trade West African chocolate can't be guaranteed to be non-exploitative, so Tony's slogan is "on the way to 100% slavery-free chocolate.")