What is the Fairtrade Labelling Organization?
Fairtrade Labelling Organization (FLO) is a worldwide Fairtrade Standard setting and certification organization. FLO maintains a registry of more 200 cooperatives representing over 800,000 producers and their dependants in more than 40 countries. Fairtrade Labelling started in the Netherlands, where coffee was the first labelled product. The Dutch label is called ‘Max Havelaar’, after a best-selling 19th century book about the exploitation of Javanese coffee plantation workers by Dutch colonial merchants. After this first initiative, other national Fairtrade labellers soon followed, some using the same name, others introducing new names, like TransFair, Fairtrade Foundation and Rattvisemarkt. At present, there are 17 Fairtrade Labelling Initiatives under one umbrella organisation, FLO-International. There are Fairtrade Labels on dozens of different products, based on FLO’s certification for coffee, tea, rice, bananas, mangoes, cocoa, sugar, honey, fruit juices and footballs and even cu
