Richard Etherington

Recent Activity

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  Richard signed the petition | over 1 year ago

  Save Girls from Female Genital Cutting
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  Richard commented on the article | almost 3 years ago

  Who Owns Fair Trade?: My Response

  I agree that "fair trade" must be owned by the fair trade community. It is not owned by FLO and must not be defined by FLO either. Fair trade has always been about relationships along the value chain and getting the best outcomes for those at the bottom (while ensuring each stage of the process remains sustainable, otherwise trade will cease). We work outside the FLO "box" because our core product, Virgin Coconut Oil is a new, small volume commodity and FLO have not developed any guidelines for it. And we are working with extrememly remote indigenous communities who produce small quantities of product. As such the system is too small to afford third party certification expenses. The problem is that you can have a brilliant model and fantastic outcomes for the producers but if you don't have a FLO label on the end product some people start to question your integrity ("If it is fair trade why don't you have a FLO label?"). Unfortunately this does no one any good... and sounds like fair trade is owned by FLO.