Ellie, you said-

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Cocoa beans heat up to 45-50C during fermentation anyway, so I feel that all that "raw" chocolate is a wishful thinking.

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But in Chloe's book on couching she says that chocolate is counched at 140-167f. degrees for up to three days. I double checked with Shawn at Askinosie and he said Chloe is right. Shawn went on to tell me that you can counch at 118 degrees f. (I know metric is better - too busy to calculate it) but at 118 f., it doesn't kill all the bacteria that needs to be killed.

Does anyone know what extra bacteria is killed after 118 f. degrees to 160 degrees f.?

Is it dangerous to sell raw chocolate in my shop?

Thanks for your time!

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http://www.poshcircle.com
where businesses meet with their customers online

Ashland, Oregon USA

You are extremely knowledgeable about chocolate and I hope to one day be as half as smart as you when it comes to chocolate, but your social skills and temper need some working on.

With that said, if you are ever in Southern Oregon, stop by you freaking hippy and lets have a drink and you can teach me more about chocolate and we can both have a laugh. :)

Thanks for the links and education.

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http://www.poshcircle.com
where businesses meet with their customers online

Ashland, Oregon USA

Your propensity for senseless name-calling (e.g. "Freaking Hippies") was what brought me into this discussion.

And sadly, I see you're still at it.

You can go right ahead and call me whatever unpleasant names you can think of (over the years, this forum has helped me develop a hide like a rhinoceros). But if you lay off the name-calling, you might find that the discussion becomes a lot more productive.

On the subject of raw chocolate:

On the first page of this thread, I linked to two detailed discussions about raw chocolate that I have contributed fairly extensively to. I know that many people have found those discussions useful and interesting, because they've publicly said so. (It seems sensible to provide links rather than repeating the thousands of words that I and many others have already written on this subject).

Here are those links again:
http://www.thechocolatelife.com/forum/topics/1978963:Topic:11710
http://www.thechocolatelife.com/forum/topics/raw-chocolate-what-is-it

If you take the time to read them, I think you'll find that those linked threads answer all of the questions you asked in your original post.

And by the way, if you really want to know who I am "in real life", you should ask someone who actually knows me in real life ... like your good friend Shawn Askinosie, for example.

Samantha Madell
http://www.tava.com.au

p.s. Endangered Species was started and located, until bought out, 1 mile from my house. A lot of chocolate going on in Southern Oregon. If you are ever here, let me know and we'll go drink Rogue Ale Chocolate Stout!

Taza's 70's bean to bar is amazing too. CAN YOU SAY Banana! :)

Both are Organic and Fair Trade. Does it help marketing.. of course... do people in Europe and Australia understand the power of those two tags when it comes to marketing in the US? Maybe, maybe not.

I don't care so much about organic as much as I do fair trade. :) Is it real? I don't know. I'm ignorant to it all and is why i come here. ;)

Chemical, nice links! Thanks a lot! :)

Seneca, you posted exactly my thoughts... I have nothing wrong with the raw foodies, I have two best friends who make awesome raw food and are both true to its philosophy. In fact I sell a lot of chocolate from one of my raw food friends who calls it raw and it's really good tasting. It's when I hear the definition of what I hear here versus the heat I read about here that makes me want to educate them and let them know more about it. Ty for your post, it made my day. :)

I said raw chocolate was a gimmick and still think it is if by definition the bean never reaches 114 degrees. (from the definitions of my raw food friends.) Fair trade is a good thing.. organic is a good thing.. in fact all the flowers we sell are both and veriflora certified. You want to know my shop? http://www.chicfloral.com Phone number and address are there to tell your friends to avoid me. I am good friends with Sean at Askinosie (fair trade / organic) and Fredrick at Dagoba (lives 3 miles from me) They both are skeptical about raw chocolate and the safety issues it raises. Sorry if you assumed I said fair trade/organic was a gimmick. Start over.. my post was on Raw Chocolate.

Your replies of arrogance, know-it-all and defensiveness shows an insecurity that very un-attractive and says a lot about who you are in real life. There are other ways to make yourself look knowledgeable and help people, rather than cutting them down to make yourself look smarter.

President Obama said 'you will be known for what you build, not what you destroy' (or something close to that)- In the future I suggest you help 'ignorant' people like me, in a more cleaver or subtle way.

It is true, I am ignorant about a lot of things and I come here for help a lot, but the way you go about posting oz chocolate is child like.

http://www.hoover.org/pubaffairs/dailyreport/archive/2864991.html

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Candida Rosa Lopez, an employee in a Nicaraguan garment factory, works long hours over a sewing machine at less than a dollar an hour. Interviewed recently by a Miami Herald reporter, Ms. Lopez has a message for people in the United States and other wealthy countries who are nervous about buying goods from "sweatshops": "I wish more people would buy the clothes we make."

Contrary to what you have heard, sweatshops in third-world countries are a good deal for the people who work in them. Why? Because work, other than slave labor, is an exchange. A worker chooses a particular job because she thinks herself better off in that job than at her next-best alternative. Most of us would regard a low-paying job in Nicaragua or Honduras as a lousy job. But we're not being asked to take those jobs. Those jobs are the best options those workers have, or else they would quit and work elsewhere. You don't make someone better off by taking away the best of a bunch of bad choices.

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http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles/04/sweatshop.html

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There might be a few ministers, college students and other uninformed people who sincerely care about the Third World poor. But the thrust of the public relations campaign against the multi-nationals comes from the U.S. and European union movements and some businesses who see their jobs and profits threatened. They wish to raise the cost of overseas operations in order to forestall company relocation, or as Congressman Gephardt said he wants an international minimum wage high enough so that American workers are not competing with slave, sweat shop, and child labor around the world.

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It is basic economics as I was taught in college. My professors warned us not to participte in fair trade boycotts. With a quick google search I found an article by a PhD for you.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2008/Powellsweatshops.html

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Economists across the political spectrum have pointed out that for many sweatshop workers the alternatives are much, much worse.1 In one famous 1993 case U.S. senator Tom Harkin proposed banning imports from countries that employed children in sweatshops. In response a factory in Bangladesh laid off 50,000 children. What was their next best alternative? According to the British charity Oxfam a large number of them became prostitutes.

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You're accusing me of exaggerating? That's a tad ironic, isn't it?.

For example: nobody here has suggested that raw chocolate is "the elixir to all of our problems".

By the way, I'm still waiting for you to provide any evidence whatsoever to support the dubious claims you made in your previous post.

In fact, browsing through some old posts earlier, I noticed that you've been making the same old argument about fair trade and boycotts for more than 3 years ... and you still haven't provided a single piece of supporting evidence:

http://www.seventypercent.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=755

Regarding the use of pesticides - you seem to be convinced that your "right" to consume chocolate is more important than the health and safety of both cocoa growers and the environment.

Your apparent lack of concern for anyone or anything other than yourself speaks volumes, and clearly nothing I say is going to change that.

I do consume some organic chocolate. I would consume more if more unique, quality organic chocolate was being produced rather than subpar chocolate which sells due to the label.

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Oh, come off it, Seneca!

Criticizing certified organic chocolate is one of the most popular activities on this forum, as demonstrated by ChemicalMachine's rant on this very thread. So, any member of this forum who is under the misapprehension that organic cocoa doesn't exist must have been living under a rock.

As a matter of interest, I just searched the forum for the term "organic", and got ten pages of results!

And for the record, I can't possibly write everything I know about organic agriculture every time I simply mention the term "pesticide".

If I had meant to say that all cocoa, everywhere in the world is grown using pesticides, with no exceptions, I would have said that. But I didn't say anything like that.

What I did say is that "pesticides are used in the cocoa industry". This is undeniably true.

Furthermore, I've spent literally years talking here, and in that article I linked to in this thread yesterday, and on my own website (which is linked from my profile page) about how we at Tava source cocoa beans that are grown organically (but not certified organic) in the South Pacific.

I accept that you don't like the way I communicate, but I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on that subject.

Sam--your reply above is a good example of what sometimes disturbs me about your tone. (And please be aware that I'm trying to be positively critical here--I do appreciate your time, dedication and efforts to educate.)

You said: "For example, it is a fact that pesticides are used in the cocoa industry."

While technically true, this statement (for me, anyways) gives the impression that this is a universal fact about cacao cultivation. That's certainly not true. I've been to dozens of plantations that aren't organically certified, but where no pesticides are used. In short--it's quite possible to make factual statements that are still misleading.

I'm not worried here about my learning curve, or anybody else with a reasonable body of experience, but I think it's important for those entering this field--whether as growers, manufacturers or consumers--to be presented with the honest complexity of the system. And for those of us trying to help, I think the best path is to remain keenly aware of how much we don't know.

http://bittersweetcafe.blogspot.com
http://www.bittersweetcafe.com

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The opportunity for “unfair trade” existed in the first place because the “unfair trade” was mutually beneficial.

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A dogmatic organic only approach is unnecessarily limiting. Some chemicals are most definitely worthwhile even when considering all externalities.

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The existence of harmful chemicals does not categorically make all chemicals harmful. Many of the world’s most deadly substances are organic.

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What difference does a few degrees mean?

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Discussion is beneficial and should not be discouraged.

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Seneca, you're correct that I'm talking about factual information.

And facts, by definition, are knowable. (My Oxford dictionary defines a fact as being "something known to be true").

Hence, I'm entirely comfortable responding to (as I wrote) "myths, misinformation, and errors" with pertinent facts.

For example, it is a fact that pesticides are used in the cocoa industry. I don't see any reason to faff around and equivocate on matters of fact.

I've spent about 6 years intensively researching (and occasionally writing about) cocoa and chocolate. Many people have told me that they've benefited from my sharing of knowledge, so I'm not about to apologize for knowing as much as I do, or for sharing what I know.

And yes, I totally agree with you that matters of taste belong in another realm altogether.