Coming to the grocery shelf: fair-trade food

Consumers have saved countless animals by buying tuna labeled as "dolphin-safe" and cosmetics that are free from animal testing.

Now a new label is entering the mainstream, only this one aims to help people.

The fair-trade label is currently found on chocolate, coffee, and tea in the United States, and is scheduled to appear on bananas by the end of the year. The label assures shoppers the item was originally purchased at an above-average price. That extra money is intended to enable farmers to feed their families and send their children to school rather than to the fields.

TransFair USA, based in Oakland, Calif., began issuing the American fair- trade label in 1999 as part of a consortium of 17 national fair-trade labeling organizations in North America, Europe, and Japan. The group's inspectors make annual visits to producers throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America to ensure that the producers operate democratically and use some of the fair-trade premium for social, economic, or environmental projects.

Fair-trade products are already available in the nation's three largest grocery chains - Kroger, Safeway, and Albertsons - and through other chains including Hannafords, Shaws, Stop & Shop, Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods. Sales reached $131 million in 2002, a 53 percent jump from 2001.

"Fair-trade goods represent 0.01 percent of the total food and beverage industry, which makes them look really minuscule and irrelevant," says Gwynne Rogers, a strategic-marketing analyst at the Natural Marketing Institute. "But a 50 percent growth rate at the $131 million level is outstanding and uncommon.... If fair trade can successfully move its brand to other categories besides coffee, as it should, then it will have the growth potential to become significant in the food and beverage industry."

Most fair-trade sales do come from coffee, which in addition to large grocery chains can also be found in independent coffee houses and in chains such as Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts.

Even Procter & Gamble, after years of pressure from activists, earlier this month launched a limited high-end fair-trade coffee brand available online.

The success of coffee has set the tone for the sale of other fair-trade goods.

"In Europe, coffee was the first to arrive and raised initial awareness about fair-trade products, and in many countries other products like bananas are now selling as well as coffee," says Anneke Theunissen, a spokeswoman for Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International, the headquarters for the international fair-trade consortium in Bonn, Germany.

Fair-trade products help the farmer without costing consumers much more, advocates say, because they cut out the middleman. "Farmers become their own export company because we require licensed importers to purchase directly from them," says Nina Luttinger, business accounts manager for TransFair USA.

During a visit to Guatemala in 2000, graduate student Tara Suring of Madison, Wis., heard stories from Guatemalans about the "social damage" that large banana plantations had wreaked on the country. "What I remember most is the visible fear of the people as they would tell what they had experienced because of the plantations," she recalls.

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