Fair Trade, is it fair or not?

In preparation for Workshop 3 of the Legal Research in Commercial Law module, I've taken it upon myself to start reading well in advance on fair trade in order to get a thorough grasp of the topic.

After some thorough research, I found to my dismay, there was nothing related to fair trade on the electronic resources. Not even a journal or a book in the library for that matter! Hence, I've had no choice but to turn my attention to other means of research via an online search engine. Unfortunately, it had to be google.

I've been quite surprised at the amount of material I've found. Although they are mostly from the media i.e. the BBC and The Guardian, it's certainly played a role in raising my interest in the topic. It has suddenly dawned on me that most products I've bought in supermarkets such as Marks and Spencer and Starbucks at the University, are all fair trade goods! Why did I not think of that from before I wonder...?

So, is fair trade fair? To be honest, I cannot really answer this question as I'm torn between both sides of the argument. While I feel it's ethically and morally correct to help struggling farmers of developing countries to benefit from fairer prices in order to improve their lifestyles, I feel that perhaps it's a means of supporting international "charities" more than local charities in the UK. Why do most people feel the need to buy fair trade goods when they are not prepared to pay premium prices for local produce for example. Is this wrong?

Furthermore, what really struck me is that I noticed there does not seem to be any legislation specially related to 'Fair trade' but there is a World Fair Trade Organisation which exists. According to the World Fair Trade Organisation website; www.wfto.com, in order to obtain membership, members should be staunch followers of fair trade (hey quote 100%) and satisfy the "10 Principles of fair trade" criteria. I imagine this must be quite a challenging task to do because I remember back in the days of studying EU law, applying criteria to different countries and jurisdictions, brings to rise issues relating to differing interpretations due to language barriers. Perhaps, I could be wrong...

Stay tuned in the next few days for more posts..