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A farmer in Mont Tia national park in the Côte d’Ivoire holds a recently harvested cocoa pod.
A farmer in Mont Tia national park in the Côte d’Ivoire holds a recently harvested cocoa pod. Photograph: Ruth Maclean/The Guardian
A farmer in Mont Tia national park in the Côte d’Ivoire holds a recently harvested cocoa pod. Photograph: Ruth Maclean/The Guardian

Fairtrade chief defends cocoa sourcing scheme with Cadbury owner

This article is more than 6 years old

Michael Gidney insists monitoring will ensure farmers are not worse off under Cocoa Life partnership with Mondelēz

The chief executive of the Fairtrade Foundation has defended a controversial partnership with Cadbury owner Mondelēz and the creation of a rival sustainable cocoa sourcing scheme.

In his first public comments since it was announced that Cadbury’s Green & Black’s range is launching a new chocolate bar that is neither Fairtrade nor organic, Michael Gidney said it was important that consumers understood how large-scale ethical sourcing could help cocoa farmers - among the poorest in the world - and that the new model could be a template for the future.The familiar blue and green Fairtrade mark, a gold standard of ethical trading, is this month being ditched from Cadbury’s Dairy Milk range in favour of the new Cocoa Life logo.

By 2019, Cadbury’s entire chocolate range in the UK and Ireland, including Flake, Twirl and Wispa, will display only a logo for Cocoa Life, the alternative sustainable sourcing scheme set up by Mondelēz that was unveiled last year.

Charities and other Fairtrade chocolate makers and retailers have warned that the move could ultimately weaken the Fairtrade movement by confusing consumers with multiple logos. In addition, the packaging of Green & Black’s new Velvet Edition chocolate bar, seen by the Guardian and landing on supermarket shelves this month, makes no reference to Fairtrade.

Gidney said the “very new and different partnership” was the way forward. “We are supportive of companies who want to set up in-house schemes and create their own standards as long as they share our core principles and are accountable to us, so that we can provide consumers the assurance they need,” said Gidney.

“As the world’s biggest buyer of cocoa, Mondelēz was a natural partner. They originally came to us in 2007-08 with a proposition that is adding to what we have done and it’s taken time to develop. It’s about scale and impact for farmers and creating a model that could - in time - be used for other products. People forget that Fairtrade is co-owned by farmers and the cocoa farmers voted for this.”

The key difference between the two schemes is that Cocoa Life does not guarantee a minimum price for farmers but pledges that producers will not be worse off than under Fairtrade. “We will be holding Mondelēz to the agreement that the financial package is at least as good as the farms would get for Fairtrade through careful monitoring and publication of an annual independent report, ” Gidney said.

Mondelēz said the $400m (£302m) scheme was already helping 92,000 cocoa farmers, mainly in West Africa, and its goal was to reach 200,000 cocoa farmers and one million people in six key countries by 2022.

Gidney said the new partnership was building on the success of Fairtrade, not undermining it. “It is important that consumers look behind labels and logos and I hope they will understand how both Fairtrade and Cocoa Life can help cocoa farmers by working together - among the poorest in the world due to the volatility of the cocoa price. The average cocoa farmer in Côte d’Ivoire is paid less than $1 a day,” he said.

Twenty-five years since its launch, the Fairtade logo is recognised in the UK, its biggest market, by 91% of people.

Gidney is critical of a move by Sainsbury’s, the UK’s largest Fairtrade retailer, which is breaking ranks with a pilot for it own “fairly traded” scheme for tea.

“The principle of a company setting its own standards is fine, but the execution is flawed. Sainsbury’s call it a pilot scheme, but it’s over no defined period. Where is the detail? The question is why have they changed for what may be an inferior scheme?” Critics, not surprisingly, suspect cost-cutting is the motive.

The foundation is funded by the licences it issues to companies and stands to lose tens of thousands of pounds a year from the withdrawal by Sainsbury’s from tea and far more if it drops other Fairtrade lines.

However, Gidney said he “deeply regrets the public stand-off” with Sainsbury’s and, in a conciliatory gesture, he said: “Our door is always open.”

Sainsbury’s said it was disappointed by the response of the Fairtrade Foundation to its pilot, which is progressing well. “There remains an opportunity for Fairtrade to partner with us,” Sainsbury’s said.

More on this story

More on this story

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  • Fairtrade Kenyan roses project audited amid corruption fears

  • Mine to maker: the journey of the world's first Fairtrade African gold – in pictures

  • Fairtrade only really benefits supermarkets. A rethink is needed

  • Green & Black's new UK chocolate bar will be neither organic nor Fairtrade

  • Sainsbury’s finds itself in hot water over Fairtrade tea

  • Comic Relief and Fairtrade back ethical gold mining in east Africa

  • UK falls in love again with Fairtrade bananas and coffee

  • Pukka tea firm vows to stay ethical as PG Tips owner takes it over

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