A Permanent Divide?

Fresh Cup magazine quotes roaster on FT infighting: "The split...will certainly turn more roasters against Fair Trade."

in fair-trade coffee is starting to reach a point where consumers are likely to take notice (and perhaps become confused). On one side of the argument sits Fair Trade USA, the licensing and certifying organization that recently split with its longtime global partner Fairtrade International in an effort to significantly increase the amount of fair-trade product moving through the United States . On the other are roasters and observers including Equal Exchange who feel FTUSA has undermined a key tenant of fair trade by opening the process up to estates not organized into formal cooperatives. To get some perspective on a specialty-coffee debate that seems likely to roll on for months or years, Fresh Cup turned to Jeff Goldman, executive director of the Fair Trade Resource Network , a nonprofit that aims to objectively report on the fair-trade movement. Q: Fair trade coffee is...

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