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"Big chocolate" is a business term assigned to multi-national chocolate food producers, much akin to the terms assigned to "big oil" and "big tobacco". According to fair trade proponents including Ghanaian cooperative Kuapa Kokoo, "Big Chocolate" companies are Kraft (after their purchase of Cadbury plc in March 2010), Mars, Nestlé, and The Hershey Company. Together these companies process about 12% of the world's 3 million tons of cocoa each year. 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. At issue also 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 an arguably more unhealthy confection. 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. "Big Chocolate" also refers to the political and social effects of a unifying industry. Consolidated buying enables large cocoa users to wield significant impact in economies, many of them poor African nations, that rely on cocoa production as a critical element of foreign trade. ==See also== * Big business * Children in cocoa production * Cocoa production in Ivory Coast * Fairtrade labelling 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Big Chocolate」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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