Is Labelling a Threat to Fair Trade?

Denne artikkelen fant vi hos Shared Interest (http://blog.shared-interest.com/), og syntes det var såpass interessant lesning at vi ønsket å dele den med dere :) .

In an attempt to get a foothold into the green and ethical consumer movements, there have been a spate of new ethical certification labelling schemes that have been introduced - fairly traded, organic, shade grown, rainforest friendly are but just a few examples. So, does the introduction of these new ethical labels lead to a more informed consumer?

Research done by Konstantinos Ioannidis, a friend of Shared Interest and Ph.D Candidate at Panteion University in Athens, shows that rather than helping educate the consumer, the opposite is true – consumers are actually more confused than ever before. Not only do competing ethical certifications confuse the consumer, but this competition leads to a devaluation of all marks involved.

The fundamental issue is how do consumers know which certifications are legitimate and which ones are simply marketing ploys that play upon their desires to be ethical? In a recent post from the ‘Labor is Not a Commodity’ blog, evidence was presented that showed that the popular Rainforest Alliance certification had rather dubious corporate connections.

Rainforest Alliance & Kraft

"Kraft has been a Rainforest Alliance “partner” since 2003. Kraft is listed in Rainforest Alliance’s annual report as a donor that gave between $100,000–$999,999 in 2008 and supported Rainforest Alliance events with more than $10,000 in the same year. Former Kraft executive Annemieke Wijn is a member of the Rainforest Alliance’s Board of Directors.

Such strong financial and structural connections between the corporate purchaser between the standard setting and certification group are a conflict of interest, as Kraft has obvious incentives to meet its publicly declared purchasing commitments at the lowest possible cost. It should be of no surprise that Kraft Foods, Inc. was awarded the Corporate Green Globe Award by the Rainforest Alliance in 2006.

Rainforest Alliance & Chiquita

To recover from a weakening market position, Chiquita began working with Rainforest Alliance in 1992 to promote greater corporate social responsibility. By 2000, all Chiquita bananas grown in Latin American farms featured Rainforest Alliance’s happy green frog. This was from all vantage points a good thing, a great step towards minimizing the social injustices that plague large plantation production in the third world. In 2002, with the release of “Tainted Harvest: Child Labor and Obstacles to Organizing on Ecuador’s Banana Plantations” however, the veil was pulled by Humans Rights Watch. The farms investigated in the article, farms certified by Rainforest Alliance, relied on child labor, violated basic labor rights and suppressed attempts at unionization. In response, Rainforest Alliance went back and re-inspected the plantations in 2003, but maintained all their certifications".

This is the kind of evidence that damages the entire ethical certification movement and is a real tragedy for those legitimate organisations like FLO and the WFTO - both of which have done a fantastic job building a reputable brand around their respective labels using a set of transparent and auditable trading standards as the foundation.

So where do we go from here? Unfortunately, I don’t know. Please feel free to share your ideas with us in the comments section.