Lee over at Simple Good and Tasty invited readers to talk about Nestle's announcement to use Fair Trade cocoa in its UK Kit-Kat bars. 

It's great fodder for discussion, but I thought I'd respond here, rather than soak up too much of his bandwidth with my windbaggery.

I couldn't get through to the Wall Street Journal article to which Lee linked, but Bloomberg basically has the same story if you want to get up to speed on Nestle's decision.

But here's the 411:

Nestle's is whitewashing itself with the Fair Trade label, plain and simple.

Of course, employing the Fair Trade label is good business, too. Ethical shopping is big in Europe, and Fair Trade has become a baseline expectation on food labels there.

But how UK shoppers are to take Fair Trade chocolate from Nestle seriously, when the company refuses to take a stand against forced child labor in the cocoa industry, is beyond me. Indeed, short of force-choking a freedom fighter and blowing up Alderaan, it's really hard to imagine a more heinous "lapse" in ethics. Refusing to buy cocoa from plantations that force children to harvest for them? (We have more on the topic here, if you can stand it).

Accordingly, the International Labor Rights Forum has sued Nestle's for buying cocoa from such plantations, and here's ILRF's response to Nestle's announcement about going Fair Trade with Kit Kats:

"Nestlé cannot claim to be sourcing responsible cocoa by using a small amount of Fair Trade Certified cocoa when the majority of its cocoa could be produced by forced labor and child labor. As the largest food company in the world, Nestlé must make a stronger commitment to protecting worker rights in its cocoa supply chain as well as in its production facilities and in the sourcing of other agricultural products."

Just to be perfectly clear, Nestle is not alone on this. Indeed, many industries rely on sourcing products produced with child labor, forced labor, and prisoner labor in order to keep prices low -- and they're resisting regulation. In the video below, Rachel Maddow discusses recent concerns expressed by business groups that government is going to make child labor an issue. (The pertinent material is at the 3:26 mark of the video below).

Nestle's actions are so cynical that "Fair Trade Kit Kats" leave me feeling the Fair Trade label is becoming an example of newspeak. Meaningless, if not outright untrue.