Who deserves Vegan Society approval? A product or a company?

Recently i saw The Vegan Society has announced that Nestle had launched new vegan latte drinks with the Vegan Society approved logo.

Surprise, surprise they got a lot of stick for it, given Nestle’s practices over the years. How could an organization such as the Vegan Society dare to ‘endorse’ Nestle by approving one of their products to carry its logo? Surely this is unethical and against the very values they stand for? The Vegan Society responded saying they endorse only products not companies. Many people threatened to withdraw their membership in protest.

Ok, I understand. I’m not rushing out to buy one of these new products. But some perspective please. Are the Vegan Society helping large corporations engage in co-optation or vegan-washing? Are multinationals jumping in on a thunderous vegan bandwagon? Arguably yes.

I’ve seen all this play out with Fairtrade certification, there are innumerable products available with a fair trade certified logo that are from Big Corp. Has it harmed or helped the cause of fair trade? Both. You bring a wider audience, more revenue to those who need it but the risks of diluting the fair trade brand are high, and now we see some large companies creating their own ‘fair’ label, which carries far less accountability. But to ask that the Vegan Society become some kind of moral, ethical arbitrator of companies is not workable either, not yet anyway. Nestle seems a perfect case of Big Bad Corp, but where do you draw the line? What about supermarket own-brands? Or those smaller vegan companies who get bought out by the multinationals? It’s not so clear cut.

Should the Vegan Society have refused to endorse these Nestle products? Quite possibly yes, but on what grounds? By all means don’t buy their products, I won’t be doing so. To really try to see the amount of work necessary to investigate how ethical a company is, please turn to Ethical Consumer.

But it is a question worth asking: should the Vegan Society be held up as an organisation that considers the ethics of a company, not purely the product itself? How many Vegan Society Approved products would disappear from the supermarket shelf? And would that be a good thing?

@theoriginalvegansociety

@ethical_consumer_magazine

It’s Veganuary…

If you’re currently experimenting with a change in your diet and seeing what Veganuary is all about, well done, you’re half way through. If not…it’s never too late (even in February). As well as health and environmental benefits, the animals appreciate it too.

If you do eat meat and wonder how you could possibly consider going without it, at least give some consideration to where it comes from. You don’t have to kill your own, but someone, somewhere does, and that’s worth thinking about.

One farmer in Ontario reflected on his own chicken-killing experience recently.

(Credit: The Globe and Mail)

Ethical tea? A brief lowdown

I visited many fair trade co-ops and producers on my trip. They were producers of coffee, cacao, fruit, quinoa, cotton, flowers, to name a few. But the world’s most popular drink – tea – was one that never came near my radar. Very little tea is produced in Central and South America. Being such a popular drink, even outdoing coffee, it has a large cultural, economic and social impact on people throughout the world. From it’s origins in China, through colonisation and oppression in bringing it to the West, flashpoints in popular history (the Boston Tea Party), tea has shaped the lives of millions.

I bring this up because of the some myths and half-truths that recently came to light for me were dispelled when I read a detailed and enlightening report into the tea industry conducted by the UK non-profit organisation Ethical Consumer (learn more here).

Poor wages and working conditions remain the stand-out problem in the industry. Tea monoculture has an impact on biodiversity and has increased the need for pesticides. The most lucrative stages in tea processing – blending, packaging and marketing – are mainly carried out by tea brands in buyer countries, which continues to leave tea farmers and workers in the most vulnerable position.

Four corporations dominate global tea trade, the top two being Unilever (Lipton, PG Tips) and Tata Tea (Tetley). Little of the profit included in the retail price of a box of tea goes to the producing country e.g. for a GBP1.60 box of tea bags sold in the UK a tea picker will make just 1 pence. According to an Oxfam investigation, pickers in Assam, India receive only $1.60/day, half the legal minimum wage. Families struggle to support themselves; children become vulnerable to human trafficking.

Ethical Certification?
Various labels now adorn boxes and packets of tea in our shops (see examples below). Unfortunately, the same report highlighted that neither Fairtrade nor Rainforest Alliance certification resulted in higher wages in these large-scale plantations. Fairtrade certification alone has limited power to bring about wage increases, as they are usually decided at a regional or national level. Fairtrade did bring other benefits, though, such as proper contracts, better working conditions and a social premium for the local community.

Rainforest Alliance is a relatively new certification (2006) but has spread quickly due to deals with multinationals Unilever and Lipton. Its rapid rise is arguably due to it being a more ‘business-friendly’ ethical label (similar for the UTZ label). Rainforest Alliance focuses on how farms are managed, which is in stark contrast to Fairtrade and its emphasis of minimum prices and shofting the terms of trade more toward producers.

Muddy waters
No, not the famous blues musician. Rainforest Alliance and UTZ now muddy the waters of ethical labelling. On the surface it sounds laudable yet in reality they are too vague. Fairtrade and organic standards are stringent, clear and measurable. Fairtrade certainly has flaws, but not to the extent of Rainforest Alliance.

Another consequence of the proliferation of Rainforest Alliance certification and sales is that it takes away from the Fairtrade and organic certified farms. One of the reasons why so little Fairtrade certified tea is sold at Fairtrade prices is because of the rush to support competing labels by the multinationals.
Only 6% of fairtrade tea is sold at fairtrade tea prices due to lack of demand.

Are you confused yet?
Can you tell the difference between different ethical labels? Is there a real difference and does it matter?
Similar claims are made by these competing labels. And they have many common objectives that are hard to disagree with in principle. However, some objectives are hard to measure.

With Rainforest Alliance being applied on such large-scale farms and estates, auditing them properly is also a problem. One such estate investigated in 2011 by Oxfam was 75km long and employed 16,000 workers.

What to do?
Despite some concnerns over what Fairtrade can deliver, it is still the best overall option for ethical purchasing. Rainforest Alliance or UTZ tea would be preferable to non-certified tea, but it is ‘buyer beware’. Many people have a certain sense of a feel-good factor when buying ethical products. But the key is to be aware of the certification (even Fairtrade) and particularly with Rainforest Alliance, realise that it is a very flawed label.

There are also some other ways in which you can make a positive contribution to those workers. These include:
-buying direct sourced tea
-buying single origin, not blends
-buying loose leaf tea rather than tea bags

Ethical labels you might see:

At A Glance – label summary:
Fairtrade: aims to reduce poverty, integrate sustainable development and for tea farms and estates, promote sustainable management
Organic: strict criteria on wildlife and the environment
Rainforest Alliance: Promote better management of tea farms and estates through environmental, social and economic criteria, with focus on environmental criteria. Only 30% of the tea needs to meet the standards in order to gain certification
UTZ: like Rainforest Alliance, focus on better management of farms and estates