People's Recovery, Empowerment and
Development Assistance Foundation, Inc.

Fair Trade is one response from ordinary people that 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 multinational that runs sweatshops, uses child labour or rips off farmers.

Millions of fair mined people buy Fair Trade products not only because they are high quality, 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 come from reputable organisations and producer groups in the developing world. The fair trading organisations that have been spreading the word for more than 40 years are the best judges and they have set up the International Fair Trading Association (IFAT). Members are recognised as fair traders par excellence.

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 Fair Trade sticker to parade so they can claim to be ethical. They might indeed carry one or two fair trade products but hundreds of others might come from the sweat shops.

Profit making companies called ‘fair trade labeling organisations’ have come forward to provide supermarkets with a fair trade logo - for a price. There are several of these firms and they work together. But maybe not all are practicing fair trade themselves. They are declaring through advertising that their stamp of approval is the only credible guarantee of fair trade practice.

They have taken it upon themselves to lay down the law 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 arrogance is being challenged by some of the members of IFAT.

One supermarket, at the instigation of one unnamed labeling organization, 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; its products were bumped off the shelves for something else, no doubt a big multinational with oodles of money.

One labeling organisation has been heavily criticised in the media and by non-governmental organizations for certifying Nestle as a Fair trader. Does that not mean that all the other brands of Nestle coffee are not fair traded?

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 but has a bad labour record. How can such a company be awarded the badge of fair trading and how can the labeling organisation that gave it the badge have any credibility? [End]