Do You Have a Fair Trade Sweet Tooth?

Just Sweets' Andrea Reubin and her glamorous Sweet Bun

Wednesday night when I walked into the conference room for the most recent St. Louis Jewish Environmental Initiative general meeting a tantalizing surprise met me: a table full of decadent fair trade chocolate desserts!

The night’s guest, Andrea Reubin of Just Sweets dessertery based in St. Louis, visited to discuss her efforts to make tasty deserts more humanity friendly by using Fair Trade Certified ingredients in her desserts and by selling them online nationwide.

“My story is simple:  I love dessert but it has to be worth it!” Reubin said, explaining her philosophy of using only top-notch ingredients, as many local as possible, and, first and foremost, for all ingredients produced in developing countries to be Fair Trade Certified. Fair Trade Certified ingredients, she said, translate into living wages that provide food, shelter, clean water, good health, education and the building strong, successful families.

Each of Just Sweets’ desserts have a Fair Trade story, too, detailed on both the website and in a fashionable dessert lookbook. Each ingredient follows each story with each Fair Trade Certified and organic ingredient labeled.

The Just Sweets’s luxurious desserts I sampled and recommend:

• Fair and Squares
• Raspberry Criss-Cross Squares
• Chocolate Babkas

What is Fair Trade?

Fair Trade USA in the independent, third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in the U.S. Their requirements for becoming Fair Trade Certified revolve around six principles:

1. Fair price and credit
2. Fair labor conditions
3. Direct trade
4. Democratic and transparent organizations
5. Community development
6. Environmental sustainability

I was happy to learn, about Fair Trade’s commitment to environmental sustainability. It makes sense to do so, of course, as pesticides sprayed in fields affect the workers perhaps more than they do the consumer.

Fair Trade USA says so, too, noting, “To improve producers’ living and working conditions, their environment must also be clean and healthy. Environmental standards are therefore integral to the Fair Trade criteria.”

Fair Trade Certified environmental standards include:

• Protecting water resources and natural vegetation areas
• Promoting agricultural diversification, erosion control, and no slash and burn
• Restricting the use of pesticides and fertilizers
• Banning use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs)
• Requiring proper management of waste, water and energy
• Fair Trade also promotes organic farming with training for producers and a higher price for organic products. Many producers invest their Fair Trade premium funds in organic certification, which has led to outstanding results: more than half (62%) of all Fair Trade products in the United States were also organic.

Additionally, the World Fair Trade Organization, the global representative body of members committed to 100% Fair Trade, uses a similar list of ten principles to help traders implement a Fair Trade business model.

Discussion Question

What Fair Trade items do you buy, and is it important to you?

Sources

Just Sweets : The Fair Trade Movement pdf

Fair Trade USA : Understanding Fair Trade pdf

World Fair Trade Organization