How was the concept of Fair Trade Certification developed?
The first Fair Trade certification initiative, called Max Havelaar, was proposed in Holland in 1988. It marked an important departure from the ATO model. The Fair Trade seal was offered to mainstream coffee roasters who were willing to trade even a fraction of their total volume on Fair Trade terms. By bringing in larger coffee roasters and pushing Fair Trade into mainstream supermarkets, this seal exposed many more consumers to the benefits of Fair Trade coffee and greatly increased the number of farmers who benefit from Fair Trade. After the Fair Trade seal demonstrated itself as a viable marketing concept, several groups from other countries in Europe adopted the initiative, many under the name of TransFair. However, for most of their history, the Fair Trade labeling organizations remained a collection of independent, autonomous, nationally based initiatives that shared criteria and worked with the same farmers, but pursued common goals with different strategies. There are currently
