In our last post we lamented that, after a very tough year last year, there was no love for the oompa loompa’s on Valentine’s Day. With the burning of the Sydney Chocolate Factory, the shuttering of the West Berkeley Scharffen Berger and San Franciso Joseph Schmidt Plants by Hershey, and the tainting of Private Selection with Salmonella, among other chocolate-related disasters that started off the year, Oompa Loompas have been having a very hard time.

Since then, we’ve learned that chocolate could one day be in short supply, the Maya nut can be prepared to taste like chocolate, and an oompa loompa spent the night in jail after a drunken ball with Spiderman and Tinky Winky.

But more recently,

• March 6, 2009 Cadbury’s is going Fair Trade
  Cadbury’s has agreed to pay a minimum price of $1,600 per tonne of cocoa it buys from Ghana to improve living conditions in the region.
• May 8, 2009 Chocolate is on display at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences
  Which includes the cacao tree.
• May 8, 2009 TCHO’s Waterfront Factory Opens
  It’s 20,000 square foot Pier 17 factory on the San Francisco waterfront is open for business.
• May 10, 2008 Chocolate can Power an F3 Racing Car
  Researchers have developed a formula three racing car that runs on biodiesel made from cocoa butter, the waste product from chocolate production.
• May 11, 2009 Cold Stone Expanded Their Partnership with Rocky Mountain Chocolate
  Several hundred stores across the country are going to be co-branded with the Cold Stone Creamery and Rocky Mountain Chocolate brands, increasing exposure, and hopefully demand, for chocolate goods
• May 10, 2009 UAE Premium Chocolate Business Resists Recessionary Dynamics
  The premium chocolate business in the UAE has been bomming, with Barsha-based ChoCo’s seeing a threefold increase in sales for chocolate between 2006 and 2008.

It’s not much compared to all the harshness they’ve had to endure for the last couple of years, but it’s a start.