KitKats Will Soon Be Made With Sustainable Chocolate

The move comes amidst concerns over child labor.

There is a big, positive change on the horizon for popular chocolate brand KitKat: According to Bloomberg, its parent company Nestlé announced that the candy will soon only be made with "sustainably sourced cocoa."  KitKat will be the first large global chocolate brand to make this switch.

The move comes as the chocolate industry faces allegations of using child labor in the "supply of raw materials." The industry has long faced criticism that companies buy cocoa from farms that use child labor. A report by the Fair Labor Association released last year shows that random visits to farms in the Ivory Coast that supply Nestlé revealed that at least four kids under the age of 15 were working in the cocoa fields. To change this, Nestlé notes in a press release that KitKat bars will only be made with cocoa "accredited by independent third parties" starting in the first quarter of 2016. The move is part of Nestlé's large initiative to source 150,000 tons of sustainable cocoa by 2017.

In addition to using more sustainable ingredients, Nestlé will eliminate fake flavorings and colorings from all of its chocolate candy products. In February, the company announced that by the end of 2015, all of its chocolate candy products will no longer have fake flavorings or colorings. Food colorings will be replaced with ingredients from seeds and plants and artificial flavors like fake vanilla will be replaced with the real deal.

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