Cadbury Does the Right Thing

Congratulations to Cadbury on its decision to make Dairy Milk a fairtrade product. This seems to be a rare but genuine example of a major corporation using its power and influence for positive effect. Chief Executive Todd Stitzer has done well.

Despite loving chocolate, I have not always been a fan of Cadbury. I remember listening to Chairman John Sutherland at a Business in the Community conference some years ago, just after Channel 4 had broadcast a powerful documentary on the role of slavery in chocolate production in the Ivory Coast. The programme had reduced me to tears. I was hopeful that I would hear this corporate giant proclaim that slavery had no place in their industry and they would get the leading companies together to create a programme to outlaw it.

I was to be disappointed. Mr Sutherland chose instead to whine about the role of the media and how consumers might blame Cadbury, even though they sourced very little from the Ivory Coast. For a company that claimed a positive role in society (while selling consumers vast quantities of not very healthy products) it was a truly feeble response.Many companies proclaim their commitment to corporate social responsibility.

However for many it is little more than a marketing gloss. This is obvious in extreme cases like British American Tobacco. BAT has a great community programme but its effect is trivial compared to the devastation wrought by its main product. If BAT had any genuine commitment to society it would at least stop marketing its cigarettes (especially in the third world, where it now focuses most of its pernicious efforts).

Let's hope that Cadbury's decision will be good for sales and will lead other companies to do the right thing. This could be shifting to fair trade products. Or it could be to simply ask the question of what they would do differently if they actually put ethics at the heart of their company.Imagine. Mobile phone companies might give lower rates for customers who hang on to their old models, rather than endlessly persuading them to upgrade. Supermarkets could restrict their special offers to healthy products, rather than 2-for-1 on giant packets of crisps and the like. Electricity companies could do more to help their customers waste energy.

If companies were genuinely committed to social responsibility they would put ethics and values at the heart of their products. It is great to see Cadbury doing just that.