I totally get it… there is so much to feel guilty about out there in the world, sometimes it’s easier to stick your fingers in your ears and chant “nah nah nah nah”.

But.  Can I bend your ear oh so gently for a moment?

Chocolate is a guilty pleasure – one I love (especially at about 9.30pm at night; naughty).  But what if it was relatively simple to alleviate some of the guilt?  And have only good eggs in your basket.

Easter egg hunts are awesome fun right? (I love playing the hider now as much as I loved the hunt back when I was a kid.)  But it’s tempting {almost makes sense} to scrimp on the easter egg hunt-eggs because, well, the kids don’t really care about the quality of their eggs – more is more right?!  But actually, there is much more to it than that.

The “more” part includes a bunch of confusing certification labels – but before you get overwhelmed (and this is the crazy part) only 5% of chocolate has the certified labels.  So what about the others?  Why don’t the other 95% mention anything (do we assume they are guilty or they just don’t care?)?

Those little logos mean stuff.  Kinda important stuff.  And, if they are missing, it probably (like really just actually) means stuff like:

• this chocolate is made from cocoa that is farmed by children (and sometimes adults) who have been sold into slavery (and yes this really happens in 2016 – but it’s very hard to report given it’s fragmented, involves displaced children in developing countries and local governments and businesses find it easy to turn a blind eye while they make a tidy profit)
• this chocolate contains unregulated palm oil (which means it’s harvested in the wild, as opposed to grown on a farm, and this has resulted in a huge deforestation that is still happening in parts of Asia, devastating to both the environment and the Orangutans who are either left for dead or displaced)

The logos mean much more than this, but these two points are the big ones for me – fix these and the trickle-down effect is huge.  If proper market prices are paid for the cocoa and farming practices are regulated and scrutinised it means (simplistically) that communities are supported, parents are employed, children go to school, farms prosper.  If palm oil is not used (or at the very least it’s farmed sustainably) the earth, the orangutans and future generations will prosper.

It’s crazy that a sweet little symbol of life and new beginnings, the egg, can actually be delivered to market using practices that are at complete odds with this sentiment.  I’m not religious but I studied enough at school to know the egg represents hope and new life, quite the opposite of human trafficking and environmental devastation.

So before you reach for that amazingly discounted bag of Easter eggs or that giant chocolate bunny, stop and check for the UTZ, Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance symbols – without these you are buying into the 95 percent of the chocolate sold that is not certified to be free from the use of forced, child or trafficked labour.

So, my question again – are those “good eggs” in your basket?  Knowledge is power.

Disclaimer:  I am a blog ambassador for World Vision.  World Vision champions the plight of disadvantaged communities and works with them to break the poverty cycle.  This is not a sponsored post.