Four-fifths of all milk chocolate is sold in the United States and Europe, and increasing amounts are consumed in both China and Latin America.

To provide ethical assurances on cocoa harvesting for consumers, Fair Trade and UTZ Certified chocolate was established in the 21st century.

In 1687, Hans Sloane, an Irish physician and collector, introduced the beverage to London after seeing the people of Jamaica enjoying the drink.

[2] The preparation was promoted for its medicinal properties, and was manufactured by Nicholas Sanders and William White, and was joined by other milk chocolates around the city.

[3] From there, milk chocolate spread, first to France, where the pharmacist to Louis XVI, Sulpice Debauve, introduced the drink to the Court, and then further afield, reaching as far as the United States by 1834.

[4] In Dresden in the German Confederation, Jordan & Timaeus were developing a mechanism to produce hard chocolate using steam power.

[6][7] In 1875, the Swiss entrepreneur and chocolatier Daniel Peter, based in Vevey and related to the Cailler family, first successfully combined cocoa mass, cocoa butter, and sugar with condensed milk (recently created by his neighbour and friend Henri Nestlé) to produce solidified milk chocolate.

[13] In 1898, Cailler opened its new factory at Broc, where milk chocolate began to be produced on a large scale.

[13] The same year, Suchard of Neuchâtel launched the Milka brand; Carl Russ-Suchard had previously developed a first milk bar in 1896.

[12] The Swiss chocolate industry also expanded in the late nineteenth century with the establishment of new companies, such as Frey and Tobler.

[20] As a result of the increasing popularity of chocolate, especially among the working and middle-class, cocoa consumption began to grow extraordinarily; global demand grew 800 percent between 1880 and 1900.

[21] To meet these demands, cocoa production expanded, notably in West Africa, where the Forastero variety began to be mass cultivated in the early twentieth century.

[22] Although considered inferior to the Criollo variety, the Forastero type bean is more suited for the manufacture of milk chocolate and is cheaper to produce owing to its higher yields.

This favored the implantation of large factories (as well as new populations of workers) in the countryside, where abundant fresh milk supplies are readily available.

The first consolidations in the industry were in Switzerland, where the takeover of Lindt by Sprüngli took place in 1899, and Nestlé had already emerged as the largest manufacture in the country by 1929.

[37] This has continued; for example, in 2015, Thorntons, the British chocolatier that in four years before had produced the largest chocolate bar in the world weighing 5,792.50 kilograms (12,770.3 lb), was taken over by Ferrero.

For example, Belgian chocolate is known for its mild milky flavor, while some Russian brands have a strong cocoa taste.

[50] China has also introduced legislation to require locally produced milk chocolate to contain 25 percent cocoa butter.

[52] Advertisements pronounced that chocolate bars combined both a source of essential energy and the "perfectly balanced food" of milk.

[56] Sugar, the last major ingredient, is added at the same time as the milk powder, either in a roll refiner or conche.

It consists of mixing cocoa liquor with sweetened condensed milk and drying it into a powder resembling bread crumbs.

[56] The process of making chocolate crumb usually produces a Maillard reaction, resulting in a subtle "cooked" flavor.

[71] At the beginning of the twentieth century, bars which combined milk chocolate with other sweet ingredients appeared on both sides of the Atlantic.

[72] Other Swiss chocolatiers, Theodor Tobler and Emil Baumann, invented Toblerone in 1908 which contained almonds, honey and nougat.

Many of the early chocolatiers, including Cadbury, Fry's, Rowntree's and Terry's, were founded by Quakers who saw the wellbeing of their workers part of their business ethic.

[82] The companies were pioneers in social welfare, providing a safe working environment, high quality housing and other benefits to employees that were ahead of many of the industrial norms.

[83] Cadbury, for example, provided paid holidays, insurance and night schools for workers, as well as constructing Bournville in Birmingham, UK.

[87] Rising consumer awareness, as well as greater corporate and employee interest, led to increasing voluntary action to address human rights issues.

[89] Initially launched by Stichting Max Havelaar in the Netherlands in 1988, the Fair Trade movement expanded into the mainstream in the following decades, with cocoa second to coffee in terms of sales and volume by 2011.

[90] For example, in Germany, major supermarket Lidl commenced promoting their own brand milk chocolate with their own Fair Trade label in 2006.