“Fair Trade USA is electing to maintain its subpar threshold of just 20% fair trade contents to use a front panel label on a product with no requirement to list the percentage of fair trade ingredients,” said the organization.
20% threshold too low?
The rules changes also mean brands are no longer required to use all fair trade ingredients that are available from a fair trade certified source and dairy has also been excluded from calculations.
“Together these policies mean that a milk chocolate bar that contains more of both sugar and milk than chocolate, with chocolate as little as a third of total dry weight, could still have a fair trade label on the front of the bar,” said Fair World Project in a statement.
It said other fair trade certifiers such as IMO's Fair for Life had a minimum 50% threshold or required firms to list the percentage of fair trade ingredients.
Fair Trade USA is a separate entity to Fairtrade International, which uses a different product labeling system.
NGO confronts Hershey
The NGO said the rule changes came soon after Hershey had announced that it would use Fair Trade USA as a future certifier.
Jeff Beckman, head of corporate communications for Hershey, told this site: “As we move to sourcing 100 percent third-party certified cocoa for all of our chocolate products around the world, we will source certified cocoa from a number of certifiers. “
The company announced in October last year that it would source only 100% certified cocoa by 2020.
Currently only two Hershey brands, Hershey’s Bliss and Dagoba, are certified and carry the Rainforest Alliance certification seal.
Labeling hoax?
Fair World Project argued that Hershey had made no commitment to source other fairly traded ingredients like sugar, a big component of many of its products.
“Because Hershey spends less on cheap sugar produced under exploitative labor conditions, the Hershey's 30% fair trade chocolate bar will be less expensive than a chocolate bar made with fair trade vanilla, sugar, and other fair trade ingredients in addition to fair trade cocoa.
“This fair trade hoax takes advantage of consumers' intentions to buy fair trade products, creates unfair competition for the fully committed fair trade brands who use a maximum of fair trade ingredients in order to have a fair trade seal, and most importantly harms the farmers and farmer co-ops that supply truly fair trade brands with fair trade ingredients,”
Beckman said: “We will continue to engage with our stakeholders on important sustainability issues to give consumers confidence that Hershey products are responsibly sourced and of the highest quality.”
The NGO said that unless Fair Trade USA increased its threshold to 50% and required firms to label the percentage of non-certified ingredients it would be misleading consumers and greenwashing the fair trade market.
UPDATE - Fair Trade USA has since confirmed its new rules are currently draft changes. The organization argues that some ingredients like sugar are mainly sourced domestically in the US making it difficult to source purely Fair Trade ingredients. Brands that source less than 100% can still carry the organization's logo, but it uses a 'Fair Trade Certified Ingredients' logo rather than one that says 'Fair Trade Certified'. See here for more details.