Teun van de Keuken (born 1971) is a Dutch producer of television and radio programs who established a reputation investigating fair trade and production practices in the food industry; he founded the chocolate company

Tony's Chocolonely Tony's Chocolonely is a Dutch confectionery company founded in 2005 that produces and sells chocolate. In 2018, the company's market share in the Netherlands was 18 percent, making it one of the country's largest chocolate manufacturers. Hist ...

. He debuted in 2017 as a novelist.

Biography

Television and investigative journalism

Van de Keuken was born to strongly left-wing parents (his father was documentary filmmaker

Johan van der Keuken Johan van der Keuken (; 4 April 1938 – 7 January 2001) was a Dutch documentary filmmaker, author, and photographer. In a career that spanned 42 years, Van der Keuken produced 55 documentary films, six of which won eight awards. He also wrot ...

), and referred to the environment in his parents' house as a "secular Calvinism". He became known for the program ''Keuringsdienst van waarde'', which focused on problems in food production, including

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

and

child labor Child labour refers to the exploitation of children through any form of work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and is mentally, physically, socially and morally harmful. Such e ...

. Research for this show led him to focus on chocolate. He sought publicity and a verdict by the courts on slave labor by eating chocolate bars made with slave labor, and asking to be arrested as an accessory to the crime of employing child slaves. In the end he created what he called "slave-free chocolate", manufactured following

fair trade Fair trade is an arrangement designed to help producers in developing countries achieve sustainable and equitable trade relationships. The fair trade movement combines the payment of higher prices to exporters with improved social and enviro ...

conventions, under the brand

. In 2011, 51% of the company was bought by businessman Henk Jan Beltman. In a 2016 documentary about him called ''Tony'', Van de Keuken said that it was all to no avail, that slave labor still was part of the manufacturing chain; Beltman accepted that as a challenge to continue the struggle against slavery in the cocoa trade. He made other investigative journalistic productions such as ''De slag om Brussel'' and ''De slag om Nederland'', and in 2014 published a collection of articles on food, food production, and

certification mark A certification mark (or conformity mark) on a commercial product indicates the existence of an accepted product standard or regulation and a claim that the manufacturer has verified compliance with those standards or regulations. The specific ...

s. Since 2015 he has presented ''De Monitor'', an investigative journalism program.

Authorship

Also a columnist since the mid-2000s, he published his first novel, ''Goed Volk'' ("Good people"), in 2017. The book, partially autobiographical, deals with growing up in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

and attending public schools; the author's parents made a point of sending him to schools attended by lower-class children, where he felt like an outsider and was used as a political statement. Johan van der Keuken is not mentioned by name, though the first-person narrator is called "Teun". ''

Vrij Nederland ''Vrij Nederland'' (Free Netherlands) is a Dutch magazine, established during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II as an underground newspaper. It has since grown into a magazine. The originally weekly and now monthly magaz ...

'' called the novel "semi-autobiographical" and qualified it as a coming of age novel, in which the narrator develops from being deeply ashamed of his parents and particularly his father to appreciating him as a man with good intentions.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Keuken, Teun van de Living people 1971 births Dutch television producers Dutch radio producers 21st-century Dutch novelists Dutch television presenters 21st-century Dutch businesspeople Dutch columnists Mass media people from Amsterdam Dutch male novelists 21st-century Dutch male writers