The chocolate giant is pursuing the certification and hopes to have it by this fall, and have even set up a blog so you can follow the process. They have an excellent post about what fairtrade is and what the benefits are, which include stable pricing, extra income for the farmers, and environmental protection.

[image: flickr]

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

This is bizarre and awesome: Cadbury has erected a giant billboard at Dundas Square in Toronto, Canada. The billboard has a gigantic Cadbury Creme Egg on the lower left side and a box on the upper right, both connected by a seesaw-looking device.

Presumably, as Mother Nature does her thing over the next few weeks with rain and snow, the box will fill with the precipitation, raising the Cadbury egg on the other end of the seesaw to an oversized fan that will eventually hack it open, releasing all the goo inside.

The campaign is entitled “Release the Goo,” and if you go to the website in the link you’ll find Cadbury Creme Egg commercials and can even watch a real-time video of the gigantic egg on the billboard.

Madness or brilliance? Or maybe a little of both?

[image: cadbury adams canada]

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

I love Cadbury Creme Eggs as much as anyone, but I think this one might be just a tad too big: the guys over at Pimp That Snack have created their own huge egg, complete with overly-sweet goo in the middle.

Using a pre-made chocolate Easter egg, they carefully opened up a bunch of regular-sized Creme Eggs to scrape out the goo and transfer to the larger one, which had to be reinforced with more chocolate. Not as labor intensive as some of their past projects, but pretty cool anyway!

[image: flickr]

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

Cadbury is recalling over one million chocolate bars made in their factory in Beijing after they were found to contain melamine. The 11 recalled varieties were sold mostly in Asia and the Pacific, and Hershey, producers of Cadbury in the US, say the chocolate sold in the US is not affected and that they don’t purchase their dairy products from China.

The affected Cadbury chocolate include Cadbury Dark Chocette, Cadbury Eclairs, Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate, Cadbury Dairy Milk Hazelnut Chocolate, Cadbury Dairy Milk Cookies Chocolate and Cadbury Hazelnut Praline Chocolate.

Kraft, the makers of Oreo, and Mars, who make M&M’s, are both questioning the findings of an Indonesian test that found traces of melamine in samples of their products made in China. Both companies say they’ll comply with the recall but plan to do their own testing as well. The same products were cleared of melamine in other Asian countries.

Dairy products and baby formula in China were recently found to be contaminated with melamine – the same stuff that caused the deaths of thousands of pets in the US last year – after companies added it to watered down and substandard products to falsely boost their apparent protein levels. So far 54,000 babies have become ill and four have died.

More information here.

[image: flickr]

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

An ad by Cadbury that features a guy in a gorilla suit drumming along to a Phil Collins track had a lot of people wondering “What does that have to do with chocolate??” this past fall and has recently been named the Favorite TV Ad of 2007 in a poll by Guardian. No one still knows what’s up but one article has a few ideas, including:

“A scientist would say that the ad contains a message about nutrition. Chocolate causes the release of endorphins and phenylethylamines and things like that which stimulate musicality and hair growth, hence a drumming ape.”

“A comedian would say the ad is a message about timing. If you leave a joke punchline hanging for the right amount of time, it’s funnier. If you leave chocolate to ferment or brew or whatever for the right amount of time, it’s tastier.”

I don’t know about either of those and I won’t even try and pretend I know what’s going on, but my kids sure liked it!

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

The affected bars look like this:

“The affected product is clearly identifiable by the “Win a Prize and a Half” flash on the front of the package. Only the promotional 250g Double Choc product is affected, no other Cadbury Dairy Milk products are affected nor any other “Prize and a Half” promotional products.

Please note, this product is perfectly safe for those who are not allergic to nuts and has not been distributed or sold outside of the UK.“

Refund information can be found here.

Thanks for the heads-up, Grace!

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Post from: Chocolate Bytes