we're going fair trade!

A while ago, I got an email asking if any of the cookies I was selling were fair trade. Embarrassingly, I had to respond no… I was too preoccupied with finding the cheapest ingredients to think about making things fair trade. It seemed highly unethical to be feeding Liberians while exploiting their neighbours so I started to look around. After some research and emailing, I found a bulk supplier, Cocoa Camino, who sells for a minimal price difference. Obviously, the products (chocolate and sugar) will be more expensive, only because they are paying the producers reasonable prices that reflect the cost of their labour. So. I’m spending the new few days experimenting with how turbinado sugar differs from the regular white and brown sugar I used to buy.

Initially, I was going to leave it at this little announcement but yesterday I was standing in line to get coffee and started eaves dropping on the conversation beside me. There were two guys there, one from Jamaica (I eavesdropped a lot) and the other a pretty generic looking white guy (who I have since dubbed ‘self-centered asshole’) anyway. He was making the decision between buying fair trade and not fair trade and launched into this heated speech about why he doesn’t see the point in buying fair trade. He couldn’t possibly understand why he would pay more for the exact same product just to say that it was fair trade. His friend responded by saying that he understood that and instead just gets his dad to pick up the coffee, chocolate and sugar while at the source so he pays less money (avoids marketing and packaging costs) but still can rest assured that he’s not eating his cheap food at the expense of others. I was late for class at this point so I couldn’t tell the self-centered guy exactly what I thought about him, but it got me thinking nonetheless. I suppose information about fair trade isn’t as prominent as I thought so… here is an overview.

Up until today, I bought my sugar from Redpath Sugar, a Canadian subsidiary of American Sugar Refining Inc, and my chocolate from Hershey. While information about chocolate and Hershey is widespread on the internet, there is very little about sugar, which says something in and of itself. Neither Redpath nor American Sugar Refining Ltd makes any mention of fair trade practices, which doesn’t bode well for their workers. You can check out the Redpath website to see what is involved with the production, but long story short is it is a labour-intensive process… the process is largely controlled by a handful of multinational corporations (with limited accountability) that play off the desperation of the workers. Workers are often placed in unsafe conditions where they complete backbreaking work for minimal compensation. You’d think with all the adds we play on TV about safe working conditions, we might look outside our own borders a little more seriously.

Stories about Hershey’s violations are much more pronounced… Despite the protocols put in place by the US government, very little change has actually materialized. Hershey and M&M continue to control over two-thirds of the $13 billion American industry, and are essentially accountable only to themselves. Out of the global market ($60 billion) it is estimated that roughly 1% of it is Fair Trade certified.

About 43% of the world’s chocolate comes from Cote d’Ivoire, located between Ghana and Liberia. At the end of the day, it simply seems highly unethical to feed some Liberians through the exploitation of others. I’d encourage everybody to try and buy fair trade at every opportunity, but that’s likely not possible. If nothing else, these cookies are at least a start.

So, as of December 1^st, our chocolate and sugar will come from Cocoa Camino. They have chocolate producer co-operatives in the Dominican Republic and Peru, and sugar producer co-operatives in Paraguay and Costa Rica. The relationship between Cocoa Camino and the co-operatives ensures transparency, respect and fairness throughout the production and distribution process. They emphasize this on both human and environmental levels, in order to promote sustainability and high quality.