Discover Chocolate and Live La Vida Cocoa!
Rainforest Alliance certification: worse than useless?
Over the years, many journalists and bloggers have portrayed Rainforest Alliance certification as being equivalent to (or even better than) organic and Fairtrade certification. Unfortunately, this simply isn't the case.
In truth, the Rainforest Alliance certification standards contain none of the best aspects of either organic or Fairtrade certification. (And, as has been discussed quite extensively in this thread, organic and Fairtrade certification programs are, themselves, far from perfect).
Below, I will address the following issues in more detail:
1) The Rainforest Alliance's standards are weak, to the point of being meaningless.
2) The Rainforest Alliance's standards are poorly enforced.
3) By poorly enforcing weak standards, the Rainforest Alliance is able to provide buyers and consumers with an abundance of cheap, "certified" products. This, in turn, has enabled the Rainforest Alliance to gain an unfair advantage over other (more expensive) certification programs which have much stronger standards.
4) the Rainforest Alliance has encouraged consumers to believe that ethical production is no more expensive than non-ethical production. The stark reality is this: ethical production is always more expensive than an exploitative method of production.
====================
1) The Rainforest Alliance's standards are weak, to the point of being meaningless.
****
Note: Certification standards sometimes change. This blog post relates specifically to the following certification standards, both dated April 2009, and both current at the time of writing:
Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Agriculture Standard (April 2009)
Rainforest Alliance Farm Certification Policy (April 2009)
These documents can be accessed via www.rainforest-alliance.org
****
How does Rainforest Alliance certification actually compare with Fairtrade and organic certification? The two most obvious points for comparison are pesticide usage, and the payment of premiums to growers. Then there are more general issues such as health care, education, rainforest protection, biodiversity, and sustainability. From what I can gather, the Rainforest Alliance doesn't do much in any of these areas:
PESTICIDES
Organic certification disallows the use of synthetic pesticides. In stark contrast, the Rainforest Alliance allows the use of a wide range of pesticides. If a pesticide can be legally used in the USA and the EU, then it can be used by Rainforest Alliance certified growers.
As Bill Alpert points out in his article "Do-Gooders Who Could Do Better", the Rainforest Alliance allows the use of pesticides that can kill the tree frog shown in its logo.
Furthermore, as Gallagher and McWhirter wrote more than 10 years ago, in "Bananas, Bulldozers and Bullets - Chiquita Banana":
"Chiquita's use of pesticides degrades and destroys rainforests and poisons workers, sometimes fatally. Chiquita executives have found that it is far cheaper to pay willing "environmental" organizations to apply their stamp of approval than to pay for cleaning up the problem. [...] Chiquita's primary partner in green-washing is the Rainforest Alliance"
Reference: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Transnational_corps/BananasBullet...
PRICES RECEIVED BY GROWERS
Organic and Fairtrade certification programs attempt to improve growers' lives (and also reduce the use of child labor) by paying growers a set premium for their produce.
In stark contrast, the Rainforest Alliance pays no such premium. Instead, the Rainforest Alliance simply requires workers to be paid the local minimum wage. This is a meaningless standard for two reasons:
1) the local minimum wage must (by law) be paid anyway, and
2) the local minimum wage is often not enough to live on.
Nothing that I have seen in the Rainforest Alliance's certification standards explicitly does anything to alleviate grower poverty.
Indeed, the Rainforest Alliance has been widely criticized for failing to alleviate grower poverty. In a public statement addressed to the Rainforest Alliance, the International Labor Rights Forum and the Organic Consumers Association wrote:
"When cocoa farmers sell their beans in the conventional market, they routinely receive payment below the world market price which traps farmers in a cycle of poverty. As a result, they must use child labor and cut back on other expenses. If farmers are ensured a fair, living price for their beans, they are more able to institute better labor standards and provide food, health care, education and other necessary services for their families. Ensuring a fair baseline farmgate price in these conditions is not “throwing money” at a problem – it is responding to a fundamental inequality that affects farmers’ ability to implement all standards for sustainability. The price system under Fairtrade certification is thus one of that system’s major strengths."
Reference: http://www.laborrights.org/sites/default/files/publications-and-res...
ACCESS TO EDUCATION, HEALTH CARE, AND CLEAN WATER
The Rainforest Alliance's website states that families on Rainforest Alliance-certified farms and forests "have access to education and health care".
This is a profoundly misleading statement, which implies that Rainforest Alliance certification somehow brings about access to these services. It does not. In fact, farmers cannot obtain Rainforest Alliance certification unless and until their workers have access to education and health care. Nothing that I have seen in the Rainforest Alliance's standards in any way facilitates access to these services.
Health care, education, and clean water cost money. However, while farmers must pay to obtain Rainforest Alliance certification, Rainforest Alliance certification does not, in turn, guarantee growers an increased income, nor any kind of financial premium for their products. In my opinion, this is unethical.
RAINFOREST AND SHADE TREES
Prior to October 2005, the Rainforest Alliance was actively promoting its certified cocoa as being grown "under the canopy of the rainforest". That claim was false. (The Rainforest Alliance quietly removed that claim from their website, shortly after I made a formal complaint about what I saw with my own eyes at a Rainforest Alliance-certified plantation Ecuador in 2005) ...
When I visited a Rainforest Alliance-certified cocoa plantation and fermentary in Ecuador, I saw no rainforest anywhere near the plantation. Furthermore, there were no shade trees of any description.
Perhaps most incredible of all: a large number of mature, productive cocoa trees had been cut down not long before our visit (there were ripe pods hanging from the limbless trunks). The growers told us that they cut the trees down because they had been told that they would be better off growing maracuya (passionfruit). This is clear evidence that growers simply do not receive a high enough price for Rainforest Alliance-certified cocoa.
When I came home and examined the Rainforest Alliance's certification standards in detail, I was shocked to learn that the standards do not require a plantation to contain any shade trees, let alone rainforest.
SUSTAINABILITY
The Rainforest Alliance routinely refers to its certified products as being "sustainably grown", thereby implying that Rainforest Alliance certification and sustainability are synonymous. Unfortunately, the facts don't support this claim.
For example, how can a field of felled cocoa trees (as shown above) be described as a "sustainable" cocoa plantation? Obviously, it isn't.
However, if we suspend disbelief and assume for a moment that Rainforest Alliance certification is synonymous with sustainability - then what about the fact that a product with as little as 30% certified content can display the frog logo, and claim to be "Rainforest Alliance certified"?
Read more about the Rainforest Alliance's highly deceptive labeling practices at Coffee and Conservation: When is 100% not 100%?
====================
2) The Rainforest Alliance's standards are poorly enforced.
In 2005, I personally witnessed child labor at a Rainforest Alliance-certified cocoa facility in Ecuador.
The children we saw were engaged in lugging heavy sacks of wet cocoa beans around. Heavy lifting can damage growing bodies, and it is widely considered to be one of the worst forms of child labor. For example, when INTERPOL recently rescued dozens of child slaves in West Africa, they reported that the children were found working in "extreme conditions, forced to carry massive loads seriously jeopardizing their health."
It was surprising to me that, amongst our group of Western tourists, there was a high degree of complacency about this child labor.
Several members of our group believed that the boys were family members of other adult employees, and that this made the child labor OK. Other people told me that child labor is generally OK, because (for example) working on the family farm as a child never harmed them.
I have three main problems with this complacent attitude:
1) Child labor, such as we witnessed in Ecuador, is illegal. (Anybody who truly objects to this legal protection of children might want to take the issue up with Ecuador's law makers, or UNICEF).
2) The use of child labor, as well as being illegal, is in breach of the Rainforest Alliance's own standards. And finally,
3) Child labor goes hand-in-hand with poverty - and Rainforest Alliance certification does nothing to actively alleviate the grinding poverty which typically leads to the use of child labor.
It is obvious to me that the Rainforest Alliance doesn't (and probably can't) effectively enforce its standards. Therefore, their standards are not only weak, they are actually meaningless.
I am not alone in trying to highlight this problem with the Rainforest Alliance. For example, in a study titled "Examining the Rainforest Alliance’s Agricultural Certification Robustness" (2007), Feliz Ventura concluded that "it is impossible to classify the Rainforest Alliance certification process as robust".
Furthermore, as Justin Trauben wrote for the Organic Consumers Association in June 2009: "with the release of “Tainted Harvest: Child Labor and Obstacles to Organizing on Ecuador’s Banana Plantations”, the veil was pulled by Humans Rights Watch. The farms investigated in the article, farms certified by Rainforest Alliance, relied on child labor, violated basic labor rights and suppressed attempts at unionization. In response, Rainforest Alliance went back and re-inspected the plantations in 2003, but maintained all their certifications."
Perhaps worst of all: in 1998, when Rainforest Alliance-certified plantations were found to be in breach of the standards (specifically, by using pesticides not registered for use in the United States) the Rainforest Alliance responded - not by de-certifying the plantations, but rather by weakening their own standards!
Read more about this unbelievable behaviour here, in an article titled "Environmental group loosens pesticide standards".
=========================
3) By poorly enforcing weak standards, the Rainforest Alliance is able to provide buyers and consumers with an abundance of cheap, "certified" products. This, in turn, has enabled the Rainforest Alliance to gain an unfair advantage over other (more expensive) certification programs which have much stronger standards.
(I would like to preface my expansion of this point by reminding readers that existing Fairtrade and organic certification programs are far from perfect. However, by numerous objective measures, Fairtrade and organic are both much stronger certification programs than Rainforest Alliance).
In 2008, global sales of Fairtrade certified products increased by 22%. That sounds like very impressive growth - until you compare that figure with the Rainforest Alliance's sales figures:
"The amount of coffee purchased from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms has increased by an average of 93 percent every year for the past five years".
In a document titled "Sustainable is Attainable" (PDF doc), the Rainforest Alliance notes that consumers want environmentally friendly products. The problem that they have identified is that many consumers "do not what to sacrifice anything when buying environmentally friendly products (price and quality)".
The Rainforest Alliance concludes that "people want to see sustainability mainstreamed". Their response to this knowledge is to commit to "mainstreaming sustainability!".
The concept of "mainstreaming sustainability" seems, to me, to be a euphemism for providing an abundance of cheap food items bearing the cute (but essentially meaningless) green frog logo.
In its "Sustainable is Attainable" document, the Rainforest Alliance discusses what a great marketing opportunity the Rainforest Alliance frog logo represents. Take, for example, McDonald's UK sales of Kraft Rainforest Alliance-certified coffee:
"• Unit sales up 15%
• Coffee £ sales up 23%"
Hang on a minute ... the number of cups of coffee sold has increased 15% (impressive!), but the income earned from coffee sales has increased 23% (even more impressive!). To me, this sounds distinctly like concerned consumers are being gouged.
Remember that Kraft is not obliged to pay anything above the market price for Rainforest Alliance-certified coffee. You should also be aware that Kraft is one of the Rainforest Alliance's biggest corporate sponsors: according to the Rainforest Alliance's recent annual reports, Kraft donates an unspecified amount (between $100,000 and $999,999) to the Rainforest Alliance each year (as does Mars).
=============================
4) the Rainforest Alliance has encouraged consumers to believe that ethical production methods are dirt cheap. The stark reality is this: ethical production is more expensive than production methods which exploit people and the environment.
By providing enormous quantities of cheap agricultural products (such as cocoa, tea, coffee, and bananas), the Rainforest Alliance has led consumers to mistakenly believe that ethical production methods can be as cheap as exploitative production methods. Unfortunately, this isn't true: decent wages and sustainable growing methods are inevitably more expensive than exploitative and non-sustainable methods of agricultural production.
=============================
What can you do?
Don't take ethical claims at face value: educate yourself; read the relevant standards; ask questions.
Be prepared to pay more for genuinely ethical products.
How do I respond to these issues? By speaking out, and by actively avoiding all products which bear the Rainforest Alliance logo.
In truth, the Rainforest Alliance certification standards contain none of the best aspects of either organic or Fairtrade certification. (And, as has been discussed quite extensively in this thread, organic and Fairtrade certification programs are, themselves, far from perfect).
Below, I will address the following issues in more detail:
1) The Rainforest Alliance's standards are weak, to the point of being meaningless.
2) The Rainforest Alliance's standards are poorly enforced.
3) By poorly enforcing weak standards, the Rainforest Alliance is able to provide buyers and consumers with an abundance of cheap, "certified" products. This, in turn, has enabled the Rainforest Alliance to gain an unfair advantage over other (more expensive) certification programs which have much stronger standards.
4) the Rainforest Alliance has encouraged consumers to believe that ethical production is no more expensive than non-ethical production. The stark reality is this: ethical production is always more expensive than an exploitative method of production.
====================
1) The Rainforest Alliance's standards are weak, to the point of being meaningless.
****
Note: Certification standards sometimes change. This blog post relates specifically to the following certification standards, both dated April 2009, and both current at the time of writing:
Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Agriculture Standard (April 2009)
Rainforest Alliance Farm Certification Policy (April 2009)
These documents can be accessed via www.rainforest-alliance.org
****
How does Rainforest Alliance certification actually compare with Fairtrade and organic certification? The two most obvious points for comparison are pesticide usage, and the payment of premiums to growers. Then there are more general issues such as health care, education, rainforest protection, biodiversity, and sustainability. From what I can gather, the Rainforest Alliance doesn't do much in any of these areas:
PESTICIDES
Organic certification disallows the use of synthetic pesticides. In stark contrast, the Rainforest Alliance allows the use of a wide range of pesticides. If a pesticide can be legally used in the USA and the EU, then it can be used by Rainforest Alliance certified growers.
As Bill Alpert points out in his article "Do-Gooders Who Could Do Better", the Rainforest Alliance allows the use of pesticides that can kill the tree frog shown in its logo.
Furthermore, as Gallagher and McWhirter wrote more than 10 years ago, in "Bananas, Bulldozers and Bullets - Chiquita Banana":
"Chiquita's use of pesticides degrades and destroys rainforests and poisons workers, sometimes fatally. Chiquita executives have found that it is far cheaper to pay willing "environmental" organizations to apply their stamp of approval than to pay for cleaning up the problem. [...] Chiquita's primary partner in green-washing is the Rainforest Alliance"
Reference: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Transnational_corps/BananasBullet...
PRICES RECEIVED BY GROWERS
Organic and Fairtrade certification programs attempt to improve growers' lives (and also reduce the use of child labor) by paying growers a set premium for their produce.
In stark contrast, the Rainforest Alliance pays no such premium. Instead, the Rainforest Alliance simply requires workers to be paid the local minimum wage. This is a meaningless standard for two reasons:
1) the local minimum wage must (by law) be paid anyway, and
2) the local minimum wage is often not enough to live on.
Nothing that I have seen in the Rainforest Alliance's certification standards explicitly does anything to alleviate grower poverty.
Indeed, the Rainforest Alliance has been widely criticized for failing to alleviate grower poverty. In a public statement addressed to the Rainforest Alliance, the International Labor Rights Forum and the Organic Consumers Association wrote:
"When cocoa farmers sell their beans in the conventional market, they routinely receive payment below the world market price which traps farmers in a cycle of poverty. As a result, they must use child labor and cut back on other expenses. If farmers are ensured a fair, living price for their beans, they are more able to institute better labor standards and provide food, health care, education and other necessary services for their families. Ensuring a fair baseline farmgate price in these conditions is not “throwing money” at a problem – it is responding to a fundamental inequality that affects farmers’ ability to implement all standards for sustainability. The price system under Fairtrade certification is thus one of that system’s major strengths."
Reference: http://www.laborrights.org/sites/default/files/publications-and-res...
ACCESS TO EDUCATION, HEALTH CARE, AND CLEAN WATER
The Rainforest Alliance's website states that families on Rainforest Alliance-certified farms and forests "have access to education and health care".
This is a profoundly misleading statement, which implies that Rainforest Alliance certification somehow brings about access to these services. It does not. In fact, farmers cannot obtain Rainforest Alliance certification unless and until their workers have access to education and health care. Nothing that I have seen in the Rainforest Alliance's standards in any way facilitates access to these services.
Health care, education, and clean water cost money. However, while farmers must pay to obtain Rainforest Alliance certification, Rainforest Alliance certification does not, in turn, guarantee growers an increased income, nor any kind of financial premium for their products. In my opinion, this is unethical.
RAINFOREST AND SHADE TREES
Prior to October 2005, the Rainforest Alliance was actively promoting its certified cocoa as being grown "under the canopy of the rainforest". That claim was false. (The Rainforest Alliance quietly removed that claim from their website, shortly after I made a formal complaint about what I saw with my own eyes at a Rainforest Alliance-certified plantation Ecuador in 2005) ...
When I visited a Rainforest Alliance-certified cocoa plantation and fermentary in Ecuador, I saw no rainforest anywhere near the plantation. Furthermore, there were no shade trees of any description.
Perhaps most incredible of all: a large number of mature, productive cocoa trees had been cut down not long before our visit (there were ripe pods hanging from the limbless trunks). The growers told us that they cut the trees down because they had been told that they would be better off growing maracuya (passionfruit). This is clear evidence that growers simply do not receive a high enough price for Rainforest Alliance-certified cocoa.
When I came home and examined the Rainforest Alliance's certification standards in detail, I was shocked to learn that the standards do not require a plantation to contain any shade trees, let alone rainforest.
SUSTAINABILITY
The Rainforest Alliance routinely refers to its certified products as being "sustainably grown", thereby implying that Rainforest Alliance certification and sustainability are synonymous. Unfortunately, the facts don't support this claim.
For example, how can a field of felled cocoa trees (as shown above) be described as a "sustainable" cocoa plantation? Obviously, it isn't.
However, if we suspend disbelief and assume for a moment that Rainforest Alliance certification is synonymous with sustainability - then what about the fact that a product with as little as 30% certified content can display the frog logo, and claim to be "Rainforest Alliance certified"?
Read more about the Rainforest Alliance's highly deceptive labeling practices at Coffee and Conservation: When is 100% not 100%?
====================
2) The Rainforest Alliance's standards are poorly enforced.
In 2005, I personally witnessed child labor at a Rainforest Alliance-certified cocoa facility in Ecuador.
The children we saw were engaged in lugging heavy sacks of wet cocoa beans around. Heavy lifting can damage growing bodies, and it is widely considered to be one of the worst forms of child labor. For example, when INTERPOL recently rescued dozens of child slaves in West Africa, they reported that the children were found working in "extreme conditions, forced to carry massive loads seriously jeopardizing their health."
It was surprising to me that, amongst our group of Western tourists, there was a high degree of complacency about this child labor.
Several members of our group believed that the boys were family members of other adult employees, and that this made the child labor OK. Other people told me that child labor is generally OK, because (for example) working on the family farm as a child never harmed them.
I have three main problems with this complacent attitude:
1) Child labor, such as we witnessed in Ecuador, is illegal. (Anybody who truly objects to this legal protection of children might want to take the issue up with Ecuador's law makers, or UNICEF).
2) The use of child labor, as well as being illegal, is in breach of the Rainforest Alliance's own standards. And finally,
3) Child labor goes hand-in-hand with poverty - and Rainforest Alliance certification does nothing to actively alleviate the grinding poverty which typically leads to the use of child labor.
It is obvious to me that the Rainforest Alliance doesn't (and probably can't) effectively enforce its standards. Therefore, their standards are not only weak, they are actually meaningless.
I am not alone in trying to highlight this problem with the Rainforest Alliance. For example, in a study titled "Examining the Rainforest Alliance’s Agricultural Certification Robustness" (2007), Feliz Ventura concluded that "it is impossible to classify the Rainforest Alliance certification process as robust".
Furthermore, as Justin Trauben wrote for the Organic Consumers Association in June 2009: "with the release of “Tainted Harvest: Child Labor and Obstacles to Organizing on Ecuador’s Banana Plantations”, the veil was pulled by Humans Rights Watch. The farms investigated in the article, farms certified by Rainforest Alliance, relied on child labor, violated basic labor rights and suppressed attempts at unionization. In response, Rainforest Alliance went back and re-inspected the plantations in 2003, but maintained all their certifications."
Perhaps worst of all: in 1998, when Rainforest Alliance-certified plantations were found to be in breach of the standards (specifically, by using pesticides not registered for use in the United States) the Rainforest Alliance responded - not by de-certifying the plantations, but rather by weakening their own standards!
Read more about this unbelievable behaviour here, in an article titled "Environmental group loosens pesticide standards".
=========================
3) By poorly enforcing weak standards, the Rainforest Alliance is able to provide buyers and consumers with an abundance of cheap, "certified" products. This, in turn, has enabled the Rainforest Alliance to gain an unfair advantage over other (more expensive) certification programs which have much stronger standards.
(I would like to preface my expansion of this point by reminding readers that existing Fairtrade and organic certification programs are far from perfect. However, by numerous objective measures, Fairtrade and organic are both much stronger certification programs than Rainforest Alliance).
In 2008, global sales of Fairtrade certified products increased by 22%. That sounds like very impressive growth - until you compare that figure with the Rainforest Alliance's sales figures:
"The amount of coffee purchased from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms has increased by an average of 93 percent every year for the past five years".
In a document titled "Sustainable is Attainable" (PDF doc), the Rainforest Alliance notes that consumers want environmentally friendly products. The problem that they have identified is that many consumers "do not what to sacrifice anything when buying environmentally friendly products (price and quality)".
The Rainforest Alliance concludes that "people want to see sustainability mainstreamed". Their response to this knowledge is to commit to "mainstreaming sustainability!".
The concept of "mainstreaming sustainability" seems, to me, to be a euphemism for providing an abundance of cheap food items bearing the cute (but essentially meaningless) green frog logo.
In its "Sustainable is Attainable" document, the Rainforest Alliance discusses what a great marketing opportunity the Rainforest Alliance frog logo represents. Take, for example, McDonald's UK sales of Kraft Rainforest Alliance-certified coffee:
"• Unit sales up 15%
• Coffee £ sales up 23%"
Hang on a minute ... the number of cups of coffee sold has increased 15% (impressive!), but the income earned from coffee sales has increased 23% (even more impressive!). To me, this sounds distinctly like concerned consumers are being gouged.
Remember that Kraft is not obliged to pay anything above the market price for Rainforest Alliance-certified coffee. You should also be aware that Kraft is one of the Rainforest Alliance's biggest corporate sponsors: according to the Rainforest Alliance's recent annual reports, Kraft donates an unspecified amount (between $100,000 and $999,999) to the Rainforest Alliance each year (as does Mars).
=============================
4) the Rainforest Alliance has encouraged consumers to believe that ethical production methods are dirt cheap. The stark reality is this: ethical production is more expensive than production methods which exploit people and the environment.
By providing enormous quantities of cheap agricultural products (such as cocoa, tea, coffee, and bananas), the Rainforest Alliance has led consumers to mistakenly believe that ethical production methods can be as cheap as exploitative production methods. Unfortunately, this isn't true: decent wages and sustainable growing methods are inevitably more expensive than exploitative and non-sustainable methods of agricultural production.
=============================
What can you do?
Don't take ethical claims at face value: educate yourself; read the relevant standards; ask questions.
Be prepared to pay more for genuinely ethical products.
How do I respond to these issues? By speaking out, and by actively avoiding all products which bear the Rainforest Alliance logo.
Comment
-
Comment by Diane Jukofsky on January 26, 2010 at 10:12am
- The point about visiting farms to understand how they work is certainly valid. Visiting is good, but of course still gives you a limited understanding. As a Rainforest Alliance staffer who lives in Costa Rica, I have seen the huge changes our work has made in the lives of farmers and their environment, over the 20 years I have been working for the organization. These are long-lasting changes, and the certification standards that caused them were developed with local realities in mind. In Ecuador, the Rainforest Alliance partner is a grassroots group called Conservacion y Desarrollo -- they know far better than we do what's important to local cocoa farmers and their families and children...because the farmers are their neighbors and compatriots.
-
Comment by Michiel Leijnse on January 26, 2010 at 5:20am -
Clay, I agree with most of what you say- I have been 'in-country' as you call it- I realize what's going on. I have seen (tea) farms make exemplary progress and I have seen farms that clearly need to do more work. As I pointed out in my earlier post, every certification scheme (including RA and FT) is going to struggle keeping a daily tab on tens of thousands of farms.
still, I believe certification has an important role to play until we figure out a better method to guarantee production methods. Pls let me know if you know one.
It might be that Samantha is a valued contributor- but her hysterical attack on an RA employee providing an answer to some of the issues raised by her seem to indicate to a reader like me that she is not interested in dialogue and constructive discussion- only in mudslinging.
-
Comment by Clay Gordon on January 21, 2010 at 6:53am -
As the creator and moderator of TheChocolateLife.com as well as being a participant in the 2005 trip to Ecuador that Samantha refers to (plus a 2003 visit to Ecuador that included a Rainforest Alliance employee - as well as visits to plantations in Mexico, Belize, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and now Bolivia - and extensive contact with growers, brokers, and others involved in the cocoa trade), I want to add the following observations.
The entire purpose of certification is to set and enforce standards that others can rely on to guide behavior (such as purchasing decisions). If, for example, the certification standard says, "no child labor was used in the making of a product (and by inference any of the materials and/or ingredients used to make a product)" then that means no child labor. Consumers must rely on the system and people enforcing the standard to guarantee compliance. If the certification (and re-certification) processes cannot ensure compliance with the set standards then the people who rely on them (i.e., consumers who use them to guide purchasing decisions) are being defrauded.
One of the main challenges with any certification system - anywhere in the world, not just in a developing country - is that unless the certification organization constantly monitors for compliance it has no way of guaranteeing that the standards are being met. Relying on self-reporting sets up clear conflicts of interest and it is naive at best to assume that there is no corruption in the system. Visiting a cocoa (or banana or other) plantation once a year not and cannot ensure compliance, as the photo Samantha took at the Luz y Guia co-op in Ecuador reveals.
The point I have to make for Michiel and Loco for Cocoa (and Abby for that matter) is that unless you have been in-country and personally observed what goes on, you have to rely on second- and third-hand information to make your judgments and express your opinions. Samantha (and I, so I can personally vouch for what she saw and photographed) visited an RA-certified plantation in Ecuador and saw conditions that ran counter to RA certification guidelines and reported on them, also expressing doubts about the value of certifications that cannot enforce compliance with their standards. In my experience, everything that Samantha has ever posted on TheChocolateLife.com is extremely well researched, and she is one of the few members of TheChocolateLife who consistently cites credible third-party sources in support of her contributions. She is passionate and concerned and acts from her convictions, sometimes expressing her positions and concerns in fairly blunt language.
If Samantha were alone in her criticism I would see this as an isolated issue. However, Samantha is not alone in her criticisms - and I am not singling out RA here, and it's not just cacao it's coffee and other crops. When you are on the ground in-country and start to talk with people outside the certification ecosystem who have regular contact with it, few of them have much good to say about the way certification programs are run on the ground in-country.
Which is not to say that all certification programs are inherently bad or useless, just that it's important to recognize their limitations, that they are expensive, that they are imperfect, and that they are in constant need of improvement - especially in the area of monitoring compliance and reporting on compliance issues. That is not the way they are promoted in the countries that pay for the goods being certififed, however, and the disconnect between the way they are promoted and the reality to the farmer are often in stark contrast. So - if you want to rebut this comment, speak from your own personal experience (and please let us know how extensive that is) and don't just link to documents on sites run by certification organizations; they won't paint a full and accurate picture.
:: Clay
[ BTW, the sacks pictured in the photo, when dry, usually contains 60kg (130+ lbs) of dry beans; a full sack of wet beans could easily weigh close to 90kg - or about 200 lbs. ]
-
Comment by Abby from the RainforestAlliance on January 20, 2010 at 6:19pm
-
Samantha,
I've been receiving updates of this email feed, so I thought I would just respond to your last post (I'm responding outside of office hours, rest assured). As you mention, the standard of the Sustainable Agriculture Network does get updated. It is not a static thing. We are always looking for ways to make Rainforest Alliance certification better and more effective, through research projects, stakeholder consultations and collaboration with local and international experts - and from input from individuals like yourself. It's a process that takes months and you can find more about that here: http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/agriculture.cfm?id=standards_development.
Also, the Sustainable Agriculture Network standard that we use provides extensive and detailed protections for workers and children. Like other certification programs, we allow children to accompany their families in the coffee harvest. This is a traditional and cultural practice that is legal and proper so long as the children's rights and well being are safe guarded.
Jim, I can assure you (personally) that the Rainforest Alliance is not getting rich off of certifications. In fact, the Rainforest Alliance does not receive the auditing fees - it goes to individual members of the Sustainable Agriculture Network to pay for the cost of auditing, and a fee is charged for conducting the audit whether or not the farm passes. We don't charge a fee for companies to use the seal because we feel to do so would discourage many of them (often smaller companies) from buying goods from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms and using and promoting the seal. Not charging them a licensing fee gives them more money to pay producers directly. As Michiel suggests, even when some certification programs do charge a licensing fee, it is not the producer who directly benefits. Charging the end user for the certification fee would be challenging as you don't always know who the end user will be. However, many large companies that want their suppliers (producers) to seek certification provide financial assistance to them to help pay for certification fees and improvements. Finally, we wish every country was as vigilant as Brazil, but unfortunately that is not the case.
-
Comment by Samantha Madell on January 20, 2010 at 5:51pm - Thanks Jim. You hang in there too!
-
Comment by Jim on January 20, 2010 at 5:47pm -
Samantha...
Hang in there! Sooner or later the prophets of 3rd party certification are going to run out steam. I have absolutely no reservations in regards to our farms being inspected for compliance with their certification requirements. The Brazilian Government has laws that levy heavy fines and prison cells for non-conformity. AND FOR THIS SERVICE YOU DON'T HAVE TO PAY A SINGLE 3rd PARTY CERTIFICATION FEE.
I will be the 1st to sign on to a certification program if the end user pays the fees. Unless I'm mistaken, the end user uses the RA status in it's advertisement programs. it also results in higher prices for the products. The benefits seem to be stacked on the table for certification agencies and end users of RA certified products.
Jim
-
Comment by Samantha Madell on January 20, 2010 at 5:04pm
-
Michiel Leijnse and Loco for Cocoa - thanks for your stimulating comments!
In response to Loco for Cocoa's question: "why did you not say anything to the people at the farm? Or did you contact the RA? I'm going to go out on a limb and say you didn't."
I was unable to speak with the people at the farm because I don't speak Spanish and they didn't speak English.
Hence, what I did in the first instance was to lodge a formal written complaint with Pierrick Chouard (the tour leader whose Plantations chocolate is RA certified). Pierrick's response was that he would take the issue to the Rainforest Alliance. Shortly thereafter, the RA certification standards were changed in relation to child labour, as was their website. For more information, you can refer to the original article I posted on this subject at: http://www.tava.com.au/article_uoc_review.html#RA-cert
Loco for Cocoa wrote: "from what I can deduce these are two well off individuals. They look well fed, have clean clothes, and are wearing identical types of boots that were probably given to them. Don't you think if the farm was worried about you viewing this horrible child labor they would have kept these children inside for the day?"
Loco, you have missed the point entirely. The point is really quite simple, and it is this: child labour is both illegal, and against RA standards. As I wrote in my blog post:
"Child labor, such as we witnessed in Ecuador, is illegal. (Anybody who truly objects to this legal protection of children might want to take the issue up with Ecuador's law makers, or UNICEF)."
I find it disgusting that you're prepared to noisily defend child labour as long as the children look like they're being fed, and are wearing matching boots.
-
Comment by Loco for Cocoa on January 20, 2010 at 12:48pm
-
Michiel - Excellent post. I find it shameful that Samantha chooses to attack a person working for a NON profit like the RA. Samantha - I'm sure Abby has other duties then to respond to bloggers pretending to be journalists like yourself. My favorite part of your "article" is where you talk of this horrific child labor you saw. If you were so taken aback by this serious abuse of children, why did you not say anything to the people at the farm? Or perhaps write a letter to Ecaudor's law makers or UNICEF as you have suggested for people who "truly care". Or did you contact the RA? I'm going to go out on a limb and say you didn't. If there was heavy lifting why didn't you post a picture of that? They look like they are dragging the bags to me. How much did these sacks weigh? Did you ask how old they were, or if they were a part of the farm family? I guess you believed your fellow westerners in seeing it wasn't so bad or you would have said something. You throw out wild accusations and yet have no proof except your obvious and extremely biased opinion. Of course I have nothing to go off except this excellent picture you have taken but from what I can deduce these are two well off individuals. They look well fed, have clean clothes, and are wearing identical types of boots that were probably given to them. Don't you think if the farm was worried about you viewing this horrible child labor they would have kept these children inside for the day?
It is easy to spew nonsense and ill informed opinions. Criticism in the right forum and put in the right way can be helpful, but these ridiculous opinions such as the following make your whole "article" not worth reading. "It is obvious to me that the Rainforest Alliance doesn't (and probably can't) effectively enforce its standards. Therefore, their standards are not only weak, they are actually meaningless."
I'm not going to be as genial as Michiel was. I'll be as caustic and wild as you were in slamming the RA & then Abby. You are a sensational, biased, and emotional blogger. Nothing more. Go ahead and avoid RA products, you wouldn't want to put more money into the pockets of farmers who try and put a little more money in their pockets while making the chocolate industry a more sustainable one.
-
Comment by Michiel Leijnse on January 20, 2010 at 5:23am
-
I came across this post by accident- i work for Unilever, a multinational company that works with both Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance. I have worked closely on launches of some of our products that are certified by either RA or FT.
I won't try to provide a detailed technical response- Abby from RA has done so below. I'd like to make a few observations:
- Both RA and FT are members of ISEAL, http://www.isealalliance.org/ the de facto gold standard for certification schemes. They are both credible and sound schemes working towards a sustainable future. It means that the standards have been developed through a rigorous, inclusive process and as such are credible.
- It sounds like you have personally witnessed practices which you believe are a violation of the standards. All i can say is that I am sure it is possible to find infringements within any scheme. For example, a whole documentary was dedicated to Fairtrade and how some FT farms apparently do not meet its requirements. (The Bitter Taste of Tea- you can watch it at http://digital.films.com/play/LSCQKZ# ). When you work with literally tens of thousands of farms, you can't expect a single certification body to police them on a daily basis. Both FT and RA face this problem. Does that make either system invalid? No, as long as they strive to prevent this from happening and as long as they correct these situations when brought to their attention. I truly believe both RA and FT share this commitment.
RA and FT have different objectives and use a different approach. Both schemes have their strengths and weaknesses. But both further sustainable development, and are an important step in the right direction. To encourage consumers to stop buying RA products, as you do, is in my opinion a big mistake. We need more certified product, not less. We should focus on the difference between certified and non-certified goods- rather than attacking the certification schemes that are making progress towards sustainable development. Constructive feedback to improve the schemes is helpful. Character assassination is not.
Lastly, i do want to say that the comment from Sept 2nd is, if anything, unprofessional and severely biased. RA takes your criticism seriously, and tries to provide an informed, detailed response is rewarded with a snarl that 'It's convenient for the Rainforest Alliance that they can afford to pay people like you to spend your days responding at great length to grass-roots criticism of their business. It's grotesquely fascinating to see those fat corporate donations from companies like Kraft and Mars hard at work!'
Fairtrade actually charges a license fee to companies that use its mark- which means that their communication and PR activities are paid for by corporations, including the likes of Nestle and Cadbury's. It's probably fair to say that company payments to the various Fairtrade organizations are greater than the money that RA gets (much of RA's funding comes from other sources). Would you have lashed out at a Fairtrade representative in the same way?
By bringing the debate to this level you are doing yourself and the subject of certification a disservice.
-
Comment by Samantha Madell on September 2, 2009 at 6:27pm
-
Hi Abby,
It's convenient for the Rainforest Alliance that they can afford to pay people like you to spend your days responding at great length to grass-roots criticism of their business. It's grotesquely fascinating to see those fat corporate donations from companies like Kraft and Mars hard at work!
Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of being paid to respond at such length to criticism, so I will limit my response to this:
I saw illegal child labor - including heavy lifting - with my own eyes, as shown in the photograph above, which was taken by me. Those children were working at a facility that supplies cocoa to Vintage Plantations chocolate. Vintage Plantations chocolate carries the Rainforest Alliance logo, and, according to their own website:
"Vintage Plantations Chocolates has been working with the Rainforest Alliance since its inception of the cocoa program. We were instrumental in the development of the cocoa certification guidelines, hence Vintage Plantations was the first chocolate certified by the Rainforest Alliance."
http://www.vintageplantations.com/store/our-mission/rainforest-alliance.html
Standards are nice to have, but they mean nothing if they are not adequately enforced.
I don't see any point in repeating what I've already written above about how poorly the Rainforest Alliance's standards are enforced.
Member Marketplace
Share TheChocolateLife
Badge
© 2010 Created by Clay Gordon.
You need to be a member of The Chocolate Life to add comments!
Join The Chocolate Life