So if chocolate is basically produced via modern-day slave labor a large percentage of the time, as I heard back in grad school, isn't there some U.S. governmental body that looks into supply-chain issues? There are regulations about so many other things. Do we not set standards for how things get sourced? Can we really not do anything on our own end, even if we can't change other countries' regulations?
Because I'm going on, like, my seventh year of having to feel guilty every time I eat something chocolate-based that isn't expressively Fair Trade, but I can't help wondering why it's my job to not buy things because I don't know how they might have been made, as opposed to some governmental body, something with actual background knowledge and actual clout, being in charge of keeping them off the shelves if they truly are a moral outrage. I understand that people gave up sugar back in Wilberforce's time, and I'm not saying there's something wrong with that. But I am saying that that shouldn't have to be the default strategy. The default strategy, if the stakes are as high as slavery, should be for government bodies to do their jobs, not for us to call on semi-informed citizens to engage in a boycott if they aren't made of money and can't buy Fair Trade everything. Like, didn't C.S. Lewis write something about this somewhere, about how to some extent, you can't be expected to background-research every charitable cause before you give to it? It's kind of a similar thing, isn't it?