Was your Valentine's Day sweeter this year with fair trade chocolates?!

Because even the companies selling un-fair trade chocolate that could have been made using abusive child labor got a little fair trade love on cupid's holiday. Some fair trade advocates sent fair trade certified flowers to the CEOs of major choco companies that aren't cleaning up their act, asking them to, you know, clean it up.

Which nasty companies are these? Archer Daniels Midland, Barry Callebaut, Hershey’s, Mars, Blommers, Nestlé, Cargill, World’s Finest Chocolate and Guittard Chocolate Company. Yep -- Unfortunately, most of the choco brands we came to love as kids are not actually very lovable.

Along with the flowers, fair trade activists asked these big bad companies to sign the “Commitment to Ethical Cocoa Sourcing,” a statement agreeing to eliminate harmful labor conditions from cocoa supply chains.

Did the roses entice the big companies to sign? No -- but that's no big surprise. I mean, we're talking about the same big companies that watered down the U.S. House of Representatives' effort to address child labor in the cocoa trade. This effort -- called the Harkin-Engel Protocol -- was watered down AND pushed to a later date. Now, what the big companies need to do is NOT actually eliminate child labor but simply monitor half of the cocoa-farming areas in the Ivory Coast and Ghana by July 2008. And even that goal and deadline look like they're not going to be met at this point!

Considering the fact that the “Commitment to Ethical Cocoa Sourcing” sets even higher labor and fair trade standards than this Harkin-Engel Protocol, the big companies were hardly expected to sign on.

So what was the point of even having the “Commitment to Ethical Cocoa Sourcing”? Well, at least it brought some attention to the choco issues during the choco-heavy Valentine's Day. Honestly, the choco problem seems so vast -- and the big companies that hold most of the power here don't seem to care any more than they did years and years ago when the issue was first raised.

So what's an activist to do? The International Labor Rights Forum, one of the signatories of the commitment, encourages people to send a letter to Nestle -- but I have to say that seems pretty pointless to me at this point, considering we've been sending Nestle letters for years, to no effect whatsoever. Sending a letter seems more like a feel-good effort -- though perhaps it's a good symbolic act....

My opinion: Stop buying the crappy chocolate. This will speak volumes more than participating in yet another one of those ubiquitous "click here to send another pointless email to a heartless company" dealio that does little and tends to increase activist apathy (because there are so many of these "send an email" type things). Just buy fair trade chocolate, or if you can't find that, opt for organic chocolate as a second best choice.

If you're in L.A., here a list of places you can find fair trade chocolates near you. If you need to buy online, Global Exchange has a nice assortment of fair trade chocolates to pick from.