Q: When will you teach the Cacao Grader Intensive again? 
A: The Cacao Grader Intensive celebrated its last iteration in Hawai’i, United States, during the spring of 2022. In accordance with the agreements of good faith of the Working Group on the Development of International Standards for the Assessment of Cocoa Quality and Flavour we have retired from our Cacao Grader Intensive curriculum, allowing our colleagues from Cacao of Excellence to take the lead on all aspects of cacao quality and sensory evaluation. Please contact Cacao of Excellence for questions regarding cacao and chocolate quality training via the Program’s Coordinator Julien Simonis (j.simonis@cgiar.org) or the Associate Team Leader of the Cacao Quality Laboratory and Training Center Sebastián Escobar Parra (s.escobar@cgiar.com).

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Q: How much money did FCCI make developing the protocol and offering the Cacao Grader Intensive? 
A:  FCCI’s pricing has always followed a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit model and our tax filings are transparently available via the Internal Revenue Service. The organization’s work has centered on offering education and research that are completely free and/or limited to covering costs of operation, materials, travel, and lodging. In the case of the Cacao Grader Intensive, FCCI had a pricing scheme that allowed colleagues who were cacao producers to attend the class tuition-free, via a subsidy that was drawn from the tuition paid by colleagues attending the course in chocolate-consuming countries. The Cacao Grader Intensive costs of operation per course oscillated between USD $2,500 - $8,000 depending on costs such as guest lecturer honorariums, quantity of materials needed to accommodate number of students, distance traveled from the United States, and more. We are proud to say that FCCI never registered a financial loss in any of its courses; moreover, the two core instructors of the class – Carla D. Martin and José López Ganem – volunteered all of their time to teach the 22 iterations of the Cacao Grader Intensive course as part of a broader mission to reduce information asymmetry in the cacao-chocolate supply chain. Visit the list of past courses and our partners here. ​​​