The Ojai Post

I want to encourage everyone to start thinking now , if you are going to give gifts, about buying fairtrade/organic chocolate for Valentines day, cards from recycled materials and organically grown flowers.

Valentines Day Buying Guide from Organic Consumers.org

Over 40 percent of the world’s conventional chocolate (i.e. non-organic and non-Fair Trade) comes from Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), where the International Labor Organization (ILO) and US State Department have reported widespread instances of child slavery. Exploitation of cacao farmers and farm workers is the global norm in the chocolate industry, rather than the exception.

Meanwhile organizations such as the Pesticide Action Network point out that commercial flowers, produced in countries such as Colombia, are the most toxic and heavily sprayed agricultural crops on Earth. The high profits of the transnational flower exporters are derived from poisoning the land and farmers, while forcing workers in the flower industry, often young women, to work 18 hour days for poverty wages during peak flower buying times such as Valentine’s Day.