Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/10/27/gummi-bears.html
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This seriously pisses me off. I’ve been staring at a bag of Haribo bears on the shelf that we’ve earmarked for our Stranger Things binge this weekend. And it was one of the few candies I can still enjoy. 
I think I’ll give them away to trick or treaters.
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This is a little off topic, but I’ve seen that phrase, “modern-day slavery”, before, and it never fails to annoy. If those people are held against their will and forced to work, then they’re slaves. It isn’t a different, twenty-first century equivalent of that old thing slavery we used to have. It’s just slavery.
That guy’s a modern-day idiot.
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Can we just get a list of companies that AREN’T horrible? I’m sure it’s short and would make my life much easier.
I mean, Costco and Chipotle can fulfill a lot of my needs, but not everything.
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Can’t say I’m surprized. Haribo is cheap, so you get what you pay for I guess.
Luckily we as a family already decided the Haribo product line didn’t really taste nice and we’d rather spend our sweets money on better quality stuff.
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Say it ain’t so, Joe!
Dammit! I love Haribo, and this sucks. I guess I’ll have to fire off a sternly-worded letter. Do those do any good anymore?
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Do such things even exist anymore, if they ever did?
I’ve recently come to realization just how much humanity sucks as a sentient species when all our advancement and ‘progress’ comes at the high cost of exploitation and ruination.
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But it’s ok if they’re just capitalists trying to complete isn’t it? When there is money to be made can’t human decency just fuck off while good people make good money.
The idea that they aren’t necessarily held there at gunpoint doesn’t mean they’ve really got any viable options either. Christ what a pack of assholes.
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Maybe you are the vanguard of something new. The One Percenter Halloween. The first kid gets a massive bag of sweets. Everyone after gets nothing.
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This is why I like having public-law broadcasting institutions and don’t mind the license fees.
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Sure! Easy.
Bad news about Mars Candy though…
Bad news about not only Mars, but several candy makers, in fact. Just read this tonight:
Granted, Nestlé and Hershey chocolate is awful. Cheap. Chalky. Weird-tasting.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-420762.html
Better than nothing?
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There are many problematic things about candies and corporations. GMO isn’t one of them.
That anti arctic-apples image is hilarious though, and I’m definitely going to co-opt it for something!
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People often associate slavery with labor, but I would say that slavery is essentially the notion of people-as-property. If a person’s agency is denied and they are treated like a resource to be exploited by others, then they are a slave. Whether they are being pressed into work, having their organs harvested, or whatever else they are being made to put up with. I agree that “modern-day” is a weird qualifier. I am guessing that is used to counter the obvious retort that “owning people is no longer legal in modern societies”. People are still exploited in similar ways, only a bit more subtle and abstract.
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Well, fuck. Boycott time. And by “time” I mean the remainder of my life. I hold grudges.
Reminds me of the phrase “reverse racism”, referring to black people discriminating against white people. The reverse of racism would be treating everyone equally, but on top of that, it completely ignores the fact that racism exists all over the world in many complex ways, often involving people who are neither black nor white.
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Just FTR, everyone on this thread thinking about boycotting: please, so write to Haribo about your concern.
I know a bit about the company, I really lived next door for a while. They do take the public opinion seriously. They are a family business, a weird one, granted. And a huge one. But as far as I can tell still a typical rhenanian capitalist company. They can do marketing speech, they can do lawyer speech, but some of the stuff you might write to them trickles through and might change things for better.
And since this is a report from German media, it surely would be very good to show them there are people abroad taking notice.
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I’m still shocked that no cheap, animal-friendly alternative to gelatin have found mass production yet. Can it be that hard to find a yucca, agar, or something-else that doesn’t require ground up animal bones to make deliciously gummy candies?
