Fair trade vodka, anyone?
Most consumers’ knowledge of fair trade products extends to coffee and chocolate, but the ethical business practices promoted by the movement are being applied to manufacturing and farming on a greater scale than ever in the developing world. While Fair Trade coffee and chocolate are prevalent in most retail food store chains in Canada, the logo can also now be found on items as diverse as cut flowers, rice, textiles, cotton, sugar, sports equipment, wine and yes, spirits.
There is even a fair trade gold producer in western Columbia, Oro Verde (Green Gold), which is mindful of its workers’ wellbeing and the local environment, and extracts gold by panning for it. The project gleans enough of the metal to sustain 194 local families.
To be certified as fair trade, products generally need to have been produced under better working conditions, where producers are paid higher prices than is standard for the commodity. The concept often includes environmentally friendly practices, as well as developing the communities in which the producers live.
“Fair trade is grassroots to grassroots, producer to purchaser,” said Michael Zelmer, spokesman for TransFair Canada, the national certifier of fair trade products in this country.
While more consumers are clued into green issues and buy organic and environmentally-sustainable products, awareness of the ethical origins of what we eat, drink and wear has been slower to build. This is partly because, until recently, it’s been hard to find fair trade items.
But as standardized certification and labelling of fair trade items makes more products available at more retailers, this is changing.
Now, you can even get fair trade vodka, appropriately named Fair. It is made from the grain quinoa, grown by an association of 1,200 small, fair trade certified farmers in the Bolivian Highlands. While not currently available in Canada, TransFair USA is importing it in that country and there are hopes to break into the Canadian market in the future.
TransFair is the only Canadian member of the Fair Trade Labelling Organizations International, an umbrella group of national organizations that manage the certification and monitoring of fair trade standards.
According to TransFair, this is how consumers know they can trust something labelled fair trade:
The producers – usually associations of small-scale farmers who grow the raw ingredients – have to meet a variety of criteria, including labour standards, sustainable farming and democratic participation.
- The producers report their sales to FLO-Cert, the Certification arm of the Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International, which also conducts on-site audits.
- Companies that buy products from fair trade certified producers must also follow fair trade standards, regularly report to the certification organization, and submit to on-site audits. These standards focus on the terms of trade – specifically they spell out the minimum prices that can be paid to producers, the expectation for longer-term contracts, and the requirement to provide up to 60 per cent of the value of a contract in advance, if requested. These companies are also audited to ensure the fair trade certified products they sell to their customers match the products they purchase from producers.
“The system monitors from the producer to the point of packaging, when the certification mark is applied to a consumer-ready product,” Mr. Zelner said. “It’s a complex and expensive system to oversee.”
He said the process is funded through the fees charged to companies that put the fair trade certification mark on their packages. Producer groups and traders also pay a fee, though it is considerably smaller. All funding for TransFair Canada comes from these sources and not from government agencies.
