I’m an unrepentant chocoholic. When everything goes downhill and we’re living in a post-apocalyptic, climate-ravaged wasteland, I might actually miss chocolate more than hot water. Just sayin’.
So I’m very disappointed in the Hershey Company, for deciding to use legal threats to keep the British version of Cadbury’s chocolate out of the US. They cite ‘intellectual property’ and protection of their domestic version of the Cadbury brand.
I’m not a big fan of Hershey to begin with…that sour-milk flavor, just – no. But there were some Hershey’s products I ate occasionally. If British brands become unavailable due to Hershey’s tactics, I’ll look for better domestic product.
Even before this news, I’d been concerned about Hershey’s abandonment of the company township, pensions, and other social capital projects that the Hershey Company had been founded upon. The company revamped its lines and public image slightly after news articles and documentaries focused on child-slave-labor in Africa, outsourced jobs to its Monterrey plant in Mexico, and lower-quality ingredients (Barry Callebaut, how could you prop up these guys? How?) I put the resulting Hershey ‘Bliss’ line of chocolates as better than Hershey’s normal chocolate, but not brilliant.
No more. I’ll try to research better, since Hershey has been adept at buying up competing brands over the years. I won’t knowingly buy Hershey products, even though that’s a lot of non-chocolate products to research, too. I’m not the only one.
Boo, I say. Boo.