I’ve always wondered what was worse: evil or evil masquerading as truth.

What’s good about pure evil is that there’s no guessing what it is. Evil that pretends or contains elements of truth? Well that’s another story, and a frightening one nonetheless.

And when it comes to fair trade, you’d think that such initiatives would be win-win for all involved – consumers, producers and everyone in between. But you’d be wrong. Turns out that the public appetite for ethical consumerism hasn’t gone unnoticed by corporations salivating over the opportunity to cash in on emerging market trends.

Can social justice be achieved by mindful North American consumers that choose to buy fair trade products? Author Gavin Fridell says no, and that such individual actions can’t change inequalities that exist in the market. Only collective actions can make a meaningful difference, and even then, the support or ethical imposition of the state would be more effective.

“Ethics should be imposed on us as consumers,” said Fridell, a political professor at Trent University. “In my ideal world, consumers wouldn’t even have to worry.”

Fridell has explored the topic in the book Fair Trade Coffee: The Prospects and Pitfalls of Market-Driven Social Justice. He challenges the notion of consumer sovereignty, which says that corporations just respond to what consumers want. However, Fridell doesn’t buy it. He says that consumer sovereignty is based on the assumption that consumers have adequate information, but consumers make decisions under the barrage of corporate advertising.

“They do it because it works. It’s highly effective.”

According to Michael C. Dawson’s book The Consumer Trap, $1 trillion is spent on advertising in the United States of America each year.

“That challenges the notion of consumer sovereignty. Consumers need to have real  information of where there products come from,” says Fridell.

Even then, consumers are isolated from the impacts of their decisions when the consumer is king.

“Producers subservient to the demands of the consumers,” he says.

Their  livelihoods should not depend on the whims of the consumer, but shared responsibility for decisions through purchasing policies “which don’t let individuals off the hook.” Fridell says we need to move beyond the individualism of our actions and narrow the definition of a fair trade consumer to a broader definition: a fair trade citizen.

Fair trade organizations realize that their efforts are only stepping stones to a new economic order. Currently, only 3 per cent of the world’s coffee bean farmers participate in fair trade and their are significant limits to fair trade markets. The picture has been further clouded by those with economic power, including the World Bank, whose version of a just system is “sipping fair trade coffees but continuing to push for free trade.”

Sadly, Fridell thinks the fair trade movement is a victim of its own success, as corporations use the model to market their own “fair trade” or “fairer trade” products, terms that are applied vaguely and account for only a small percentage of a companies actual sales. For example, only 6 per cent of coffee beans bought by Starbucks are fair trade purchased, while 53 per cent are certified by its own certification program.

Fridell says that Starbucks was forced aboard by social justice groups and isn’t interested in informing consumers about fair trade, but rather using it as a marketing strategy. The same kind of “sheep in wolves clothing” tactics are also employed by corporations that feign concern for the environment. Dubbed “blue wash” or “green wash,” some companies  promote themselves through what appear to be admiral initiatives, but fail to place demands on actual behaviour or the monitoring and controlling of this behaviour.

“Is Starbucks better than Tim Hortons or McDonalds? Yes,” says Fridell.

And Tim Hortons? The company is excluded the province’s two universities, Trent and McMaster, that have fair trade purchasing polices . Although Fridell is wary of the inability of individual consumers to change the system, he sees it as a starting point to more collective efforts that have a greater impact.

“Buying fair trade should be a beginning, but not an end. If we avoid dealing with the big questions, fair trade will remain for only a few.”

© July, 2009. Elmira_Independent. All rights reserved.