Russell and Carol - hayle and hearty

Cadbury was an icon of British industry and philanthropy; the fact it
made damn tasty chocolate was just a bonus. The Cadbury family built
the brand on socialist principles in the 19th century, using the vast
wealth their product generated to build hospitals, establish saving
banks for the working classes, and provide vital resources for the
blind. This was a time when the mega rich used their wealth to build
libraries and public parks, ....

John Cadbury was a Quaker, a teetotaller, and an early
environmentalist. He campaigned for better child labour laws, for animal
rights, and against the slum conditions the poor of Victorian Britain
suffered under. He believed in improving the lives of his workforce and
when his two sons took over the family business in 1861, they set about
achieving their father’s dream of building a model town for their
factory workers: Bournville, now a major suburb of Birmingham.

...

Cadbury's was an iconic British brand, one embedded into our childhoods through
memories of boxes of Roses at Christmas and women eating Flakes in the
bath. Cadbury generated British jobs, cared about its product – and made
a bloody good chocolate. Which is what makes its fall from grace all
the more bitter and unpalatable.

The 2010 takeover
was brutal and bloody and Cadbury valiantly fought against it for
months, and you can understand why. Kraft was an American multinational,
best-known for producing crappy cheese products, like Kraft Cheese
Slices....

Quite literally bankrolled by Royal Bank of Scotland, who loaned them
the money, and under Rosenfeld’s direction, Kraft forced through a
hostile takeover by bypassing the board and putting the screws on the
shareholders.   

Despite frantic efforts to find a friendlier, rival
bidder, eventually the board capitulated to shareholder pressure and our
once great chocolate brand fell into the cheesy clutches of Kraft and
Irene Rosenfeld.

(And don’t think I’m letting you off the hook either,
RBS. You treacherous gits.)

It was all so ugly that the rules governing
how foreign firms buy UK companies have since been reviewed.

Kate Lister

Oh, Kraft made promises to the shareholders and the public at large that
nothing would change and our lovely chocolate wouldn’t be tampered
with. They promised that jobs wouldn’t be lost, production wouldn’t be
outsourced from the UK, and to keep the historic Somerdale chocolate
factory open.

Within a week of the takeover...

The factory was closed, production moved to Poland, and around 400 people
lost their livelihoods. Kraft was heavily censured by the Panel of
Takeovers and Mergers for saying it would keep Somerdale open as part of
its takeover bid. Not that Rosenfeld bothered to show up in person when
MPs later summoned her to parliament to answer questions about the
takeover, something MPs at the time called “a slap in the face”.

They then started changing the recipes. In 2015,
Kraft, now Mondelēz International, announced they would no longer be
using Cadbury Dairy Milk in their crème eggs. Instead, they would use
“standard cocoa mix chocolate”, in other words, rubbish. The rage that
wells within me typing this cannot be expressed in words, dear reader.

Then they came for the Dairy Milk itself.

In 2013, Dairy Milk contained a 26 per cent minimum of cocoa solids.

Today, a bar of Dairy Milk has a miserly 20 per cent, which is the
legal minimum of cocoa solids a bar needs to be called milk chocolate in
the UK. In the EU, the minimum is 25 per cent.

To me, it is barely
chocolate anymore.

In fact, in Europe a bar of British Dairy Milk
doesn’t have enough cocoa in it to legally be milk chocolate – instead
it is “family milk chocolate”.

Just let that sink in. Cadbury’s Dairy
Milk is not legally milk chocolate in Europe.

We are paying more money for less of an inferior product, often being made in Poland.

In 2011, Kraft claimed that “a key part of our ongoing commitment to
strengthening our business is to continue to build our relationship with
the Fairtrade Foundation.” 
However, in 2016, Cadbury withdrew from the
Fairtrade chocolate scheme; meaning, among other things, that farmers
are paid a minimum price for their cocoa. They still found a way to keep the logo on their products though.

It’s not just what is wrong with Britain, it’s what’s wrong with the
world. Under Irene Rosenfeld’s direction, Cadbury shareholders were told
jobs would be safe, integrity would be preserved, and quality would be
assured. And absolutely none of that turned out to be true. Not only
that, but Rosenfeld has failed to answer legitimate questions from UK
politicians about her business practices.

And what are we left with? The shredded remains of a once glorious company and barely-chocolate chocolate that tastes greasy.

Who broke Britain? Welcome to The i Paper’s opinion series in which experts and writers debate the issues that concern them about modern Britain.

• The American woman who ripped the heart out of Cadbury
• You won’t know James Bevan, but you should know what he did to this country
• Boris Johnson wrecked Britain. But this man left even deeper scars
• The hardcore socialist whose ruinous idea is why Liz Truss became PM
• The ‘Red Tory’ behind one of the most anti-feminist ideas in British politics
• Martin Lewis: the money-saving expert… who accidentally cost Britons billions
• The cooking revolutionary who overthrew traditional British dishes
• Modern British dating is a car-crash – and Cilla Black is to blame