Looking Back, Looking Forward is a topic I have explored – on a semi-regular basis – over the past five years.

2023 has been an interesting year for me, professionally and personally, and 2024 looks like it will start with a bang and then pick up steam from there.

In this episode of #PodSaveChocolate, I will share accomplishments and disappointments for 2023 and what I am looking forward to working on in 2024.

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The European Deforestation Regulation (“EUDR”) is set to come into force over the course of 2024 and will have an impact on every cocoa bean, every gram of derivative product, and every piece of finished chocolate that enters the EU, no matter where the cocoa was grown or the derivative or finished product was produced.

Despite the widespread impact and the imminent requirement to be compliant with the regulations, there is still a universe of unknowns when it comes to many specifics of implementation.

In this episode of #PodSaveChocolate, my guest Antonie Fountain of VOICE Network and I will be discussing some of the most pressing issues that farmers, governments, brokers/traders, processors, and chocolate makers need to understand about the knowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns of the EUDR and what it means for your business.

The penalties for being out of compliance are stiff: 4% of turnover that can be attributed to the sales of the affected commodities. For chocolate makers, this means not just to the cocoa but also to the paper products used in packaging, to any CBEs/CBRs derived from palm oil, and to any coffee that might be in the recipe.

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Terry Collingsworth of International Rights Advocates has been a guest on several episodes of TheChocolateLife on Clubhouse and TheChocolateLifeLIVE.

In those episodes, we’ve discussed the work of International Rights Advocates in the legal cases here in the US whose purpose is to hold “Big Chocolate” accountable for ongoing labor abuses in their cocoa supply chains in West Africa.

Recently, CBS News aired a piece in which it showed that several Big Chocolate companies (Mars, Cargill, and Mondelēz) could not credibly say they had no knowledge of labor conditions on the farms they source from, and thus no responsibility, for the worst forms of illegal child labor, a position defended in other legal actions IRAdvocates has filed. Shortly after the above piece aired, IRAdvocates filed a new lawsuit in the DC District Court.

In this episode of #PodSaveChocolate Terry and I will discuss this case, what makes this case different from the other cases IRAdvocates has filed, and we’ll get a status update on those cases, too.

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