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"Big Chocolate" is a business term used to describe multi-national chocolate food producers, akin to the terms "Big Oil," "Big Pharma," and "Big Tobacco".^{[citation needed]}

According to advocates of fair trade, such as Ghanaian cooperative Kuapa Kokoo,^[1][2] "Big Chocolate" companies include Mondelez (which owns Cadbury), Mars, Nestlé, and The Hershey Company. Together these companies process about 12%^{[citation needed]} of the world's 3 million tons^[3] of cocoa each year.

"Big Chocolate" also refers to the political and social consequences of the chocolate industry in general. Consolidated buying enables large cocoa users to wield significant impact in economies, many of them being poor African nations that rely on cocoa production as a critical element of foreign trade.^{[citation needed]}

At the core of the chocolate debate across Europe, parts of Asia and the United States, is the definition of chocolate itself, and whether percentages of cocoa in production should render some candies unable to carry the chocolate food definition.^{[citation needed]}

At issue is the ability to replace cocoa butter or dairy components of chocolate with cheaper vegetable fats or polyglycerol polyricinoleate (PGPR), thereby reducing the quantity of actual cocoa in the finished product while creating a less healthy confection.^[4] Currently the United States, some parts of the European Union and Russia do not allow vegetable fats as ingredients of products labeled as chocolate. The United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark allow vegetable fat as an ingredient.^[5]

There are many ethical issues implicated in the chocolate industry, among them child labor, environmental impact, sustainability, and the extreme poverty of the average cocoa farmer. Food Technology reports over two million children working on cocoa farms in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire as a result of cocoa farmer poverty.^[6]

• Big business
• Bulk cocoa
• Child labor in cocoa production
• Cocoa production in Ivory Coast
• Fairtrade certification
• Specialty cocoa

• "Chocolate – the facts". New Internationalist. Archived from the original on 21 February 2006. Retrieved 7 November 2005. which cites Fair Trade Yearbook, 1994 and Cocoa Newsletter, No 3 for its information on Big Chocolate
• Shelby Biggs, Brooke (7 February 2002). "Slavery Free Chocolate? – With Valentine's Day coming up, the chocolate industry has agreed to fight child slavery on African cocoa farms. Does it mean business, or is Big Chocolate just sweetening its image?". AlterNet.
• "The Chocolate Industry: Who benefits? – Fair Trade versus Mass production" (PDF). Burnholme Community College 2004-03-11. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 April 2006. Retrieved 7 November 2005.
• Alanna MacDougall. "The Story of Chocolate and Other Reasons to Consume Responsibly". Human Rights Databank Spring 2003, Vol 9, No. 3 Reports from the Field. Archived from the original on 4 September 2005. Retrieved 7 November 2005. – MacDougall asks "is Big Chocolate to blame for the conditions of global chocolate production?"
• Morone, James A. (May 2005), "Morality, Politics, and Health Policy", Policy Challenges in Modern Health Care: 13–25^{[permanent dead link‍]}.
• The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars ISBN 0-7679-0457-5