Hi everyone,First blog and a hot potato one!!!Some of you, chocolatiers in the US, may be considering entering the above awards in the UK.Well, we have participated successfully to them for the last 3 years but this yearmade the unpopular decision not to as we feel that the Academy has to address a number of issuesto run these awards professionally.If you want to read more, check out our reasons and suggestions athttp://www.artisanduchocolat.com/ArtisanduChocolatSite/cm/Plainchocolateblog.htmOr read belowGerard Coleman,DirectorArtisan du chocolat This year we are not participating to the annual Chocolate Academy Awards. This may be an unpopular decision and a mildly commercially suicidal one but we make chocolates, not politics. And politics has come in the way of celebrating fine chocolate. The Academy has done much to raise the profile of fine chocolate in the UK but needs now to seriously address several issues if it is to represent this growing industry professionally.The Academy membership should be open and enlarged in order to remain impartial and to limit the potential conflicts of interest. We would like to call for an independent body with no commercial interest in chocolate to be formed and oversee the organisation of the awards.In recent years, most of the award winners were also members of the Academy. This could raise question of personal preferment and partiality. While we hope this is not the case, it is important that the Academy substantiates its position by putting in place the right people and processes to ensure that the Awards are truly representative of the industry as a whole and are truly impartial. For example, is it acceptable that one of the key organisers of the awards is also be the PR person of some of the brands participating?Clarity and transparency need to be achieved in all stages of the awards from sample collection (to avoid "special" batches being created only for the awards), to aggregating scores into awards, to deciding for awards not based on scores and creating new awards.In addition we think fewer awards would be beneficial to avoid dilution of their impact and confusion. Last year more than 100 awards were given.How many do you remember? There should be fewer awards categories, fewer awards given in each category and a smaller geographic spread of the participants. Wouldn't it be better to judge UK products perfectly rather than take on the world?Finally, we encourage the Academy in continuing to enforce clear guidelines as how the awards should be referred to by the winning brands. Should we mention some overjoyed winners in the past who extended their awards to "World awards" or did not to mention what their awards was for?Overall we cannot continue to participate until the Academy addresses the above issues professionally. We know there are several other chocolatiers who share our point of view but prefer to remain silent for commercial reasons. We prefer to say exactly what we think regardless of commercial and political caution. That's what this plain chocolate blog is about.