“Are these Fairtrade?” asks my five-year-old son pointing at the plate of chocolate digestives I have just placed on the table for tea? “Well, not really,” I reply rather sheepishly catching sight of the McVities labelling. “I’m not sure we can eat them then. It’s just not ethical,” adds my seven going on seventeen-year-old.
She gets down from the table, opens her school book bag and thrusts a formal looking letter at me with a disapproving look on her face. I should have known that Fairtrade Fortnight was creeping up on us. After all I suffered the continuous lecturing on Fairtrade when the children were learning about it at school last year. I became used to having my weekly shopping scrutinised for Fairtrade labels. And if a bar of Green & Black’s ever dared to enter the larder, I would be publicly shamed in front of the entire family and labelled as an unethical mother for the rest of the week.
I will now have to endure an extra half an hour in the supermarket over the next two weeks, searching for the familiar Fairtrade stamp and allow for a bit more on the overall shopping budget.
Each day the Fairtrade conversation dominates our household. At one point, my son even asks, “Is Clover (the black Labrador) Fairtrade?” Well, I suppose she is sort of Fairtrade as the family we bought her off were very nice and they didn’t sell her through a large supermarket chain, I explained. It then becomes apparent that there is a little confusion about the meaning of Fairtrade. When I probe my son further he confidently says, “Fairtrade means that the ladies passing the food across the beeper in Waitrose get more money.” He seems to have momentarily forgotten about the Fairtrade tea workers in India and in a true child-like way has focused his attention on matters closer to home, kindly sparing a thought to the cashiers’ pay packet.
However, he was still as eager as ever to scrutinise every item I placed in his lunchbox this morning. He picked up the Penguin bar disapprovingly. Before the lecture could begin I hissed, “Just don’t say a thing. If you mention that word again, I’ll fling the contents of this lunchbox including the Fairtrade banana across the fields.” “That’s not fair,” he whispered.
