UK Cadbury ban leaves chocolate lovers fuming
28 Jan 2015
Hershey's and Let's Buy British (LBB) Imports have entered into an agreement that has angered some chocolate lovers.
News broke over the weekend that due to an agreement, LBB would not be able to import Cadbury chocolate to the US from the UK, the New York Times reported.
The ban comes from a lawsuit settlement with Hershey's, which holds the license to create Cadbury treats in the US. Hershey's intends to block import of the original articles to prevent taste confusion, since it does not use the same recipe as the UK Cadbury product, according the article.
Meanwhile, a number of Twitter users started using the hashtag #boycotthershey in response and a petition started at moveon.org had garnered over 14,000 signatures by last morning.
Many British and Canadian consumers had expressed a dislike for the taste of the US chocolate. According to a taste test carried out by The Telegraph writer Andrew Baker in 2013 between a Cadbury bar and a Hershey's bar, 100 per cent of its tasting panel preferred the Cadbury's product. Among the terms used to describe a Hershey bar were: "'vile" and, in a striking number of unprompted responses, reminiscent of "vomit.'"
Meanwhile, globalpost.com reported that Cadbury still made candy bars in the US but they were not the same as the ones coming from UK.
Chocolate bars from the UK tend to have higher fat content and creamier texture because the UK required that its chocolates have a minimum of 25 per cent fat, and 20 per cent cocoa and milk solids.
Nicky Perry, who runs Tea and Sympathy, a New York-based shop that sells British goods told The New York Times that the superior taste of British chocolate came from a recipe that used fewer stabilisers. In other words, US chocolatiers were ruining their product with preservatives, which was also the reason UK chocolate melted faster than its US counterpart.
Social media users are now calling for a boycott of Hershey products, with the owners of Tea and Sympathy even urging outraged chocolate lovers to appeal directly to the company's CEO.
