Fair Trade? Think Again

Hi, I agree with quite a lot of what you say and I've tried to shop ethically since I was a teenager... at a time when ethical consumerism was largely confined to the "crusty" community where I come from, and definitely not mainstreamed into the middle class church (I wasn't a Christian then!). At the same time, in defense of the poor consumer, I'm wondering how on earth I'm supposed to know whether an item is ethical or not unless it does have something on it to tell me? I have a changing list of multi-nationals who I avoid, but choosing the good rather than avoiding the bad is quite a complex process and not everyone has time to do several hours of research prior to buying their groceries! So although heading for the fair-trade label might be a lazy feel-good option, for a lot of people it's probably the most obvious help to decision making that they actually have available at the moment.

The other issue I would like to open up is for those of us living overseas, given that Oscar is a mission-focussed resource... Here in Argentina there is no such thing as a fair-trade label, and a trip round our local shops reveals a strangle-hold by a very small number of huge corporations; for some products the only choices we have available are about guessing who is the "least-worst" of the big brand names. I'm wondering what advice you might be able to offer on ethical consumerism to those of us living outside a UK context where we don't even have the unsatisfactory benefits of fair-trade labelling etc?

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Hazel Frost April 6, 2011 at 3:04pm

Hi, I agree with quite a lot of what you say and I've tried to shop ethically since I was a teenager... at a time when ethical consumerism was largely confined to the "crusty" community where I come from, and definitely not mainstreamed into the middle class church (I wasn't a Christian then!). At the same time, in defense of the poor consumer, I'm wondering how on earth I'm supposed to know whether an item is ethical or not unless it does have something on it to tell me? I have a changing list of multi-nationals who I avoid, but choosing the good rather than avoiding the bad is quite a complex process and not everyone has time to do several hours of research prior to buying their groceries! So although heading for the fair-trade label might be a lazy feel-good option, for a lot of people it's probably the most obvious help to decision making that they actually have available at the moment.

The other issue I would like to open up is for those of us living overseas, given that Oscar is a mission-focussed resource... Here in Argentina there is no such thing as a fair-trade label, and a trip round our local shops reveals a strangle-hold by a very small number of huge corporations; for some products the only choices we have available are about guessing who is the "least-worst" of the big brand names. I'm wondering what advice you might be able to offer on ethical consumerism to those of us living outside a UK context where we don't even have the unsatisfactory benefits of fair-trade labelling etc?

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