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Comment by smackay | Hacker News Reader

The reason for the moral outrage aimed at Cadbury comes from their early history, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadbury. It's a great example of the Quaker model of doing business where social improvement was part of the mission of the company.

Now that the evil Mondelez (formerly Kraft Foods) owns them, it's open season on the not so nice things that modern business gets up to. However given that palm oil is used in everything it's a little cheap of The Independent to try and manufacture outrage against what was a beloved, British institution.

Just avoid products with palm oil, though that's getting rather hard to do. Don't bother wasting your time with this kind of junk-food journalism.

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Nothing like redirecting the conversation by implying there's "outrage" that's somehow "manufactured", yes?

Particularly because it sidesteps the things the company actually did (areas razed to the ground include 25,000 hectares of habitations in Indonesia that are home to the critically endangered orangutan) while at the same putting the blame on consumers (just do xyz, why wouldn't you).

And who can forget those pesky journalists, reporting on stuff - how dare they.

That company did not raze hectacres of forest. They paid another company in their supply chain to do it.

IMO, this is exactly what illogical manufactured outrage looks like. We can place blame anywhere down the line: workers in Indonesia who personally work to produce palm oil; the company that hires those works; Mondelez for buying the palm oil; customers for eating Cadbury eggs. I'm being told to hold Mondelez morally responsible for the situation when they are not. They certainly have the most power to stop doing what they're doing. That doesn't stop another company from buying palm oil.

Ultimately, the Indonesian people need to care enough about their orangutans to protect them. Or everyone needs to stop buying palm oil.

"My supplier did it" is not a valid excuse for ducking responsibility. If you put the demand on your supplier, and they do an unethical thing to supply that demand, then part of the blame lies on you for not having (a) done the due diligence to ensure that your supplier was above board and (b) checking that they could, in fact, meet your demand without doing illegal or unethical things. If you have no responsibility for what your suppliers do, then you could delegate practically any negative externality of your corporate practice to your suppliers.

The argument here is that Cadbury is effectively turning a blind eye (intentionally or negligently) to what their supplier is doing to meet demand. For an example of companies which actually do care about their responsibility all the way up and down the supply chain, go have a look at the Supplier Responsibility statements and reports put out by big companies like Samsung (https://www.samsung.com/us/aboutsamsung/sustainability/suppl...) and Apple (https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/).

> Just avoid products with palm oil, though that's getting rather hard to do.

It's infeasible without spending a lot of time studying the tiny print on the packaging of almost every item you buy apart from produce, meat, bread, and dairy. And even then some people will end up having to rigorously change their shopping pattern. This is in addition to all the other environmental and ethical issues in the supermarket: animal welfare guarantees, chocolate that doesn't screw the farmers over, sustainable fishing, local produce, and of course choosing to shop with the goal of eating healthy in that hall of temptations.

This is not something consumers can fix buy voting with their wallets. It's just too abstract: palm oil is used in so many products that have no strong link to that issue (unlike meat and seafood).

If is perfectly feasible. How often do you buy new products?

I skipped major part of sweets that I liked and that is mostly it. Wasn't big problem either.

But saddest part is that in EU boycott worked and it changed nothing due to use of palm oil in biofuels - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/26/how-palm-oil-b...

Well, probably a majority of us agree that this can be controlled from the top and not have to cross our fingers and rely on low-informed consumers to change things.

> If is perfectly feasible.

Only when it comes to food. It's impossible to ascertain the source of cleaning products' ingredients.

Depends where you live, most products with palm oil here in Europe are part of non-essential products, you just need to avoid the big brands and buy more traditional products. For bread, you just need to buy real bread and not white bread.

Eeeeh. Even "traditional" products get "enhanced" with palm oil. I was buying certain mainstream-but-local cookies for a long time since they had no palm oil. I double-checked the label some time ago and they put in palm oil now. Now idea when the changed happened. I inspected every single make of cookies (I love cookies, thankyouverymuch) in several chains of supermarkets and pretty much every option had palm oil. So far, my only option is either super expensive "farmers' market" style cookies where significant part of price is for fancy packaging and buying experience. Oh, and I've to drive across town to one of the few lcoations.

I just want a damn bag of cookie without any BS :(

Make your own, with 100% butter. Takes 5 minutes, and tastes so much better it's not funny.

Palm oil is barely fit for human consumption, and it tastes bad. When mass manufactured products are no longer fit for purpose, it's time to ditch them.

I do the same for bread as well. Just bought a 25kg sack of organic white flour which will keep me going for a few months. With practice, takes just 10 minutes to make a loaf of bread or some batch rolls (without a breadmaker). The taste, consistency and quality of it is again much better than any of the mass-produced stuff, which makes it worth that little bit of time to prepare.

I used to have a recipe for cookies I called "15 minute cookies" because you could be eating them 15 minutes after you thought of making them - yes, including mixing, preheating oven, cooking - which was always an irresistible thought. Sadly I lost the recipe, must find it again! Really, it's so easy to make cookies (far easier than bread), you should try. And you can add whatever special ingredients you like.. Experimenting is fun.

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/12665/15-minute-cookies

Hmm thanks..but mine didn't have chocolate, butter or eggs or vanilla extract. (Am vegan, don't like chocolate or vanilla extract) The only wet thing was oil I think. Just dry ingredients (maybe flour/oats/coconut/seeds/spices or whatever you want) + sugar + oil. It was 7 minutes cooking.

Bake it? I do this with bread, for exactly the same reasons.

It is absolutely feasible. I do it. My wife does it. There are alternatives for almost everything, you just have to look and spend a bit of time researching. Sometimes you have to order products on the Internet instead of getting them in your local supermarket.

Also, if a product just mentions "vegetable fat" it's more than likely palm.

Not really as Cadbury chocolate barely used palm oil, except I think in a couple of products.

Palm oil in everything is a Mondolez "innovation", along with lying about not closing the factory - a promise broken a week after takeover, and changing many recipes for the worse. I think it's the palm oil that gives American chocolate a distinctly greasy feel, and now some of that is being given to Cadbury too.

No problem, Aldi do perfect copies of how Cadbury Fruit and Nut and other bars used to be. So the copy is cheaper and better than the original now. They do good high cocoa chocolate too.

Unilever, meanwhile, has been praised by Greenpeace for being at the sustainable end of palm oil use. Though they don't do enough to preserve the planet they're at least giving it some board time. Seems more than adequate reason to criticise Mondolez and their bought up brands.

Aldi chocolate is pretty ok though they use hazelnuts where Cadbury Fruit and Nut had almonds.

That might be a further nail in the coffin though as I've heard in the past almonds themselves are not great (need heat and lots of water?) whereas hazelnuts fall from the trees around here (south coast UK) and are wasted.

Hmm. I thought the Aldi copy of Fruit and Nut used almonds too. I'm more a fan of the Whole Nut, even so I'm surprised to think I haven't noticed. I'll have to double check next time we're in now. :)

I think almonds do indeed need lots and lots of water.

Not too take it too deep, but a Chocolate factory in the early 1900 is fundamentally using products involving slavery and productions from remote island where local population social well being is not really a focus.

It comes with the times, and it was just normal from an English empire perspective. Just saying, it's a matter of perspective I guess.

It wasn't the English empire it was the British Empire.

It's quite important not to confuse that given the history of prominent Scottish trading firms such as Jardine Matheson.

I stand corrected

While I recognise it's an important local issue, globally I don't think Scotland is seen as materially different from Britain.

I think you've missed the point. Scotland is a sub-set of Britain so that would be actually fine but...

The grand parent didn't conflate Scotland and Britain. They conflated an English Empire with the British Empire.

England is a different sub-set of the British Isles.

Much of the commodities trade in South East Asia during the period referred to was controlled by powerful Scottish firms.

To talk about an "English Empire" like that is not a "local issue" it's just factually incorrect.

There was never an English Empire. However, it seems an ongoing trait of non British people (mainly Americans) to call our nice little set of islands and territories 'England'. Most notably is constant use of the title 'The Queen of England' - There hasn't been a Monarch of just England since before 1603. To counter, maybe us Brits should start pretending that New York in't part of the USA, or that there are only 9 federal regions (take your pick which one should no longer belong!).

Summary: Stop calling Britain 'England'.

Of course, it's not actually wrong to call her the queen of england any more than its not wrong to call her the queen of canada or australia - it's part of her title, just not her entire job. It would be just as incorrect to call her queen of the UK or queen of great britain.

Yeah I know its a bit nitpicky and less of an issue but there you go :-)

> Of course, it's not actually wrong to call her the queen of england

Yes, it is.

> any more than its not wrong to call her the queen of canada or australia - it's part of her title,

Queen of Canada is one of her titles.

Queen of Australia is one of her titles.

Queen of England is not (Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is.)

I'm not making much of a 'technical' argument for the rules as written but more one of convenience - I think what im getting at here is that while the act of union means that its a single kingdom, its relatively useless to suggest that she is not the queen of england because the title that gives her that power also gives her more power over other areas, when she also has more power than that title alone gives her - that line of thinking almost seems to lead to the idea that it would be wrong to suggest any specific title without listing every single one?

Something along the lines of the following: If somebody asks me "who is the queen of scotland" I would answer the question - I assume that the asker is not asking about a specific title that was removed in 1707 but instead they want to inquire about the current monarch that holds control over that territory

I mean of course my thought process here is a bit rambly but I think you get where im going.

I suppose that asking, "Who is the queen of Scotland?" is a bit like asking, "Who is the president of Texas?".

And all Americans are okay with being called Texans?

England and Scotland are subsets of Great Britain, both physically (on the island named Great Britain) and politically (both countries within the UK).

I think you might want to read up on this history of Cadbury and the Quakers in general. They were some of the most ethical companies around.

I got through the whole wikipedia article, and I don't see anything related to anything ethical they did related the products they are buying.

I think your point is they were very serious about treating well their company workers. I totally agree, it's just in the current perspective we would also care about supply chain and how the products are sourced.

> Cadbury was established in Birmingham, England in 1824, by John Cadbury who sold tea, coffee and drinking chocolate.

All their main businesses come from imported raw materials with heavy slavery involved. That's the times, it's no use faulting them for that retrospectively, I just don't agree calling them "ethical" now.

While it's likely there were problems in the supply chain. I don''t think you can fault Quaker ethics, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers_in_the_abolition_movem... However I guess it's hard to fight a war on all fronts simultaneously.

Not just the workers though. Read more about Quaker businesses, rather than jumping to conclusions. They were responsible for treating their customers and suppliers ethically and fairly as well. For example, the reason we have standardised pricing on all consumer goods is entirely down to 19th century Quaker ethics, which required not overcharging based upon how much they percevied one could afford, and treating everyone equally required to ask the same fair price for everyone, regardless of class, race or whatever, in line with their Christian philosophy and beliefs. This also extends to treating your suppliers on the same terms. While slavery was in existence for a very short period at the start of the company's founding, it's not something which the founders of the company would have countenanced, and I don't think it plays any particularly significant role in the company's history.

Their fair and ethical business practices set the standard for how good companies should operate. Cadbury would be horrified by the practices of Kraft/Mondelez. Both are capitalist enterprises, but there are good reasons Cadbury was held in high regard, and Kraft is not. The way Kraft have treated Cadbury and its workers is contemptible. I've not bought a single product from them since the takeover, and I'm by far from the only one.

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