Why did Global Exchange decide to start a Fair Trade coffee campaign?
Because coffee is so widely traded and consumed, it has an immense impact on the economic well-being of people in poor countries. For the same reason, it also offers one of the most promising avenues for bringing about positive change. Global Exchange believes that as we criticize free trade and corporate globalization for its lack of democracy and exploitation of poor people around the world, we need to promote our own vision of a just global trade system based on economic justice. In our work against sweatshops, we have struggled for years with the need for a comprehensive system of monitoring of wages and factory conditions that doesn’t yet exist for garments as it does for coffee. With the inception of TransFair USA, Fair Trade Coffee certification became the first commodity where an independent monitoring system could track and verify that Fair Trade criteria had been met. We have been involved for ten years in promoting Fair Trade through our craft stores in San Francisco and Ber
