[Avodah] Is it Musar to Buy Chocolate?

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

Rn Shira Shmidt wrote on Cross-Currents a post titled "Money DOES Grow
on Trees-Chocolate Chanuka Gelt" <http://j.mp/1jOcl8f>. In it she points
to an interestin kof-K collection of teshuvos about chocolate
<http://www.shemayisrael.com/parsha/halacha/Volume_5_Issue_19.pdf>,
and to other halchic discussions, and then a bit about the Jewish history
of choclate.

My comment there didn't generate any dialog, and dialog is more an
email list thing anyway, so, I'm copying what I wrote there:

    I would like to see a teshuvah deal with the issues of how
    chocolate is farmed. Are we prohibited from buying a product made
    by child slavery in hopes that a boycott would help change industry
    practices? And I mean literal slavery: human trafficking, work
    without pay, whippings, having to spray pesticides with no personal
    protection, young children with scars on their arms wielding machetes
    to open the cacao bean, etc

    Is it like hunting for sport, an activity that even if technically
    permissible, is something Jews should not want to be involved in
    [eg Nodah biYhudah YD 2:10]?

    (There is fair trade kosher chocolate [OU certified], but at $3.50
    for a bag of ten chocolate coins...)

    Why does it seem that these questions are left for those who
    redefined Judaism to Liberal Democrat ideals under the rubric of
    Tikkun Olam? Why cant we find actual halachic discussion in our
    community of this kind of issue?

In terms of the metzi'us question of whether we actually can hope to
improve the lives of those slaves by boycotting, I am was emailed the
following:

    ... [B]oth Hersheys and Nestle are facing class action suits by
    their investors. The companies will lose and have already begun to
    promise to change in the next decade. Right now, the better bars like
    scharffen-burger, green and black, and the other Fairway brands are
    all slave free. All the protest has gotten them to change.

But on Avodah, we talk Torah. Assuming for the sake of discussion
that this description of the mtzi'us is the situation at hand, is
it assur to buy chocolate from any of the firms one might be able
to influence to force humane treatment of other humans?

And if mutar (which I am currently doubting), is it appropriate for
Mevaqshei Tov veYosher?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             You are where your thoughts are.
micha at aishdas.org                - Ramban, Igeres haQodesh, Ch. 5
http://www.aishdas.org
Fax: (270) 514-1507