Trade fair Damnit

I like coffee, more than a man should perhaps, but i am also a wishy-washy namby-pamby loony-liberal. What this really means is that I like little ways of being slightly less cruel to the world around me and people I've never met. With my coffee, and with food as far as I can, I'll go for fairtrade. Most high street chains respect this and offer fairtrade or, more normally, have fairtrade as standard. Starbucks do fairtrade pretty much by default, that's starbucks, the evil ones. Now flavour wise fairtrade is no different to your unfairly traded coffee (Organic can change that but that's a whole other argument) but it costs more because apparently if we want to treat farmers fairly we will have to pay for it rather than big companies taking small cuts in their massive profits.

Anyway, I was in sainsburys last night and was trying to pick up some coffee (Real stuff, instant is not coffee, its coffee flavouring) and I was particularly keen on a 2 for £3 offer, however in Sainsbury's own range there are 4 fairtrade options out of about 15, A basic Colombian, and organic and a decaff equivalent of each. This is pretty much standard across all the major chains, and is in my view pretty unacceptable. Think of it this way, the only difference between the beans bought for Sainsbury's Fairtrade Colombian coffee and its unfair trade equivalent, is how much the people producing it were paid. This seems absurd when you think about it, Sainsbury's, or Tesco, or Asda, or Morrison's, go to Columbia, and buy two sacks of coffee, for one they say "We'll pay you £20 for this" and for the other, for Fair Trade, they say "We'll pay you £100 for this" this must lead to some confused coffee producers. Its almost as if Fair trade is treated like a separate product, and there are few who are not guilty, Whittards don't have a 100% fairtrade range of coffees, Taylor's of Harrogate have no Fairtrade markings except on designated fairtrade brands and as previously specified all the major supermarkets have a mix.

So, to the Fairtrade people, I say stop this, don't let people away with this anymore. I will look at buying Cafe Direct or that ilk if the supermarket won't sell me fairtrade, so stop letting them away with this, I won't hold them to 100% fiartrade yet, although the Co-Op is there with its own brand stuff, but don't allow a fairtrade range anymore, deny them the use of your mark if they won't buy all their coffee fairtrade.