Fair Trade and battling labeling logos 
(republishing, copying, no restrictions)
By: Father Shay Cullen
Fair Trade is one response of the ordinary people can help the lives of millions of small struggle craft workers and farmers. By buying a genuinely fairly traded product there is that assurance that most of the money goes to the producer and not to some billionaire multinational or millionaire mogul that runs sweatshops uses child labour and rips off the struggling farmers by paying a pittance for their produce.
For over forty years, the fair trade movement has grown and spread around the world and thousands of world shops across Europe have brought new prosperity to once impoverished workers, craft makers and farmers. This has been achieved because they pay a just and fair price for the products and deliver back to the producers a share of earnings through many social services benefits and development projects. Fair trade is the Hope of he Philippine poor.
Millions of fair mined people buy these Fair Trade products not only because they are high quality nor unique designs but because they see it as the way of bringing about Trade justice and helping people in a dignified way. They want to be considerate and conscientious consumer.
But they want to know that the products are really Fairly Traded and are coming from reputable organisations and producer groups in the developing world. The Fair Trading organisations that have been spreading Fair trade all over the world for more than 40 years are the best judges who and what fair trade is. They have grouped themselves into an organisation called International Fair Trading association (IFAT) and the members are recognised as fair traders par excellence and implement as much as local political and economic circumstances all the Fair trade criteria of the organisation.
Supermarkets and big business corporations recognise the Trade justice movement and the impact of Fair trade on customers and they want to be called Fair traders, no matter how shady their other business dealings are. They want a sticker or a badge or log of Fair Trade to parade before customers claiming to be fair, just and ethical. They might carry one or two Fair trade products but hundreds of others might come from sweat shops or child labour.
Profit making organisations and their sister companies called fair trade labeling organisations have come forward to provide these supermarkets with a fair trade logo - for a price. They earn by selling a Fair trade label or logo. There are several and they work together these days. But maybe not all are practicing fair trade themselves. They are declaring through advertising that only their label, mark, logo or stamp of approval, call it what you will, and is the only credible guarantor of fair trade practice.
They have taken to themselves the authority to lay down the dogma of what is fair trade and what is not. To determine who are the saints and who are the sinners. But they only consider those who apply and are ready to pay them for the privilege. This arrogant “we know best for all rest” is being challenged by some of the members of IFAT.
One super market at the instigation of one unnamed labeling organisation has taken the fair trade products of an IFAT member off their shelves. With an excellent track record of Fair Trade for 30 years its products are now declared not to fairly traded without paying for that stamp of approval retaliation was quick it products were bumped off the shelves for something else. No doubt some big multinational with oodles of money.
One labeling organisation has been heavily criticised in the media and by NGOs for certifying the giant multinational corporation Nestle as a Fair trader. It has brought out a coffee that they claim to be fair traded according to the criteria set up by Fair Trade Labeling Organisation. Does that not mean that all the other brands of Nestle coffee are not fair traded? Not all can be fair trade if only one is certified.
Nestle is a trans-national corporation that allegedly has one of the worst trading reputations among NGOs. In the Philippines a three year strike at the Nestle plant was dispersed in September late last year when unknown assassins shot dead the labour union leader. Nestle is making billions of pesos profit every year in the Philippines but has a bad labour record and failed to do justice for its workers. Can such a company be awarded the certificate and badge of good corporate practice and Fair Trading and can the labeling organisation be credible having given it? [To be continued]
