Mars Against Fair-Trade

To begin with a briefly introduction of Mars, it has developed a series of strong brand and is one of the confectionery industry's greatest success chocolate manufacture in the UK. At Mars (Mars, Official Web., 2009), their commitment states that "A mutual benefit is a shared benefit: a shared benefit will endure" and their responsibility states that, "As individuals we demand total responsibility from ourselves." (Mars, Official Web, 2009) The company strongly believes that only success that is shared can be sustained and it is the goal to achieve in all the company does.

However, Mars has come under some mild criticism in the media for their ethical standards. Even though Mars has a long history and is a powerful company, it doesn't take the responsibility and the resources to pay farmers a stable and sufficient price, which tends to abusive child labor on cocoa farms since a Reporter Konye states that most of population are children in Ivory Coast and Ghana. (Konye Obaji Ori, 2007) And farmers are aim to get more harvest for more income to support their daily life. Accordingly, there is no doubt to say that Mars should be strongly in supporting Fair Trade as a leader and helping more farmers come into the Fair Trade system but the truth is they did not.

Key fact 1:

An officer in Mars claims: "We believe that adopting a Fair Trade approach would actually harm a majority of cocoa producing families by excluding them from the worldwide cocoa market and disrupting their incomes." (Fair trade, 2007)

According to the Fair-trade Foundation, Mars is totally misunderstanding the fair trade system. Fair trade is the best way for farmers to enter into the international market and the only promise is to make sure farmers earn a reasonable and acceptable income. Indeed, it would disrupt farmers' incomes but which is in good way.

Key fact 2:

An officer in Mars claims says: "Fair trade is an approach that works best with farms that have access to infrastructure such as communications and warehousing facilities. Currently the majority of farmers in West Africa do not have access to [necessary] infrastructure." (Fair trade, 2007)

In fact, there are no difficulties for farmers to get involved in fair trade. The market research reports that it already involves more than 42,000 farmers from 9 different countries in West Africa and Latin America. (Global Exchange, 2007) Most of the cocoa producers are small-scale farmers and they could easily join the fair trade system by forming cooperatives. Furthermore, the cooperative formation is simple and free, and makes infrastructure development easier because cooperatives help individual resources to achieve the necessary steps. In contrast, the biggest obstacle to fair trade is a lot of companies are unwilling to support the system. However, the truth is companies always do not want to pay more for what their crops are worth. Therefore, only a fraction of farmers' crop can be sold at fair trade cost.

Ethic and values:

It is obvious that cocoa is the primary resource in making chocolate and most of the cocoa in Mars trades from the world's largest cocoa producers- the Ivory Coast and Ghana. Recently, it has been found guilty of exporting cocoa made by trafficked and enslaved children by the United Nations and US Congress. It is estimated that more than 100,000 children work in the Ivory Coast cocoa industry and about 10 percent of them are slaves. It has been considered as 'the worst forms of child labor'. (Carmel, E., 2007)

As the Ivory Coast produces about half of the world' s cocoa, so it means about half of the chocolate sold has passed through the hands of child slaves. These children work in cocoa farms for long, punishing hours by using dangerous tools and face frequent exposure to dangerous pesticides because they sometimes have to travel long distances in the grueling heat or other cruel treatment. The picture above shows one of the slave children who work on cocoa farms. Danielle Strickland, the Salvation Army's Anti-slavery Coordinator, Social Justice Director Captain, believes that it is also the responsibility for the chocolate manufacturers to figure out who produces their cocoa and how cocoa be produced.

The Cocoa Trading Process (Before Fair-trade certified)

The above diagram shows the cocoa trading process between chocolate manufacturer (Mars) and cocoa farmers. Obviously, it shows the trading price that Mars offers to farmers do not equal to the farmers desired to meet their daily living needs. Then farmers are forced to produce more crops by hiring more children to working on farms but only paying them an insufficient wages. In addition, farmers do not have spare capital to buy new tools and improve workplace conditions. Therefore, children have to work for long, punishing hours for wages to meet their life under the extremely harsh and poor working conditions. The most significantly result is that children are lack of opportunity to go to school as they have been spending most of times to work and they also do not have money to pay their school fees.

Alternative solution:

In my point of view, the most effective way for solving these unethical issues is Fair-trade. The above picture represents the logo of Fair-Trade. Companies or brands who are set to be fair-trade certified would be labeling this logo on their goods or services. 'Fair trade is mostly linked to looking after people,' industry analyst James Amoroso (2009) states. 'Organic food is looking after oneself; 'green' food - for example, low-carbon footprint - is about the environment. People most like to help other people.' Besides, there are also a lot of fair trade benefits and it is based on a business model that puts workers and the environment first, not last.

For instance, fair-trade is not only help farmers to achieve better living wage to meet their basic daily living needs, but also concerning about to provide a cooperative and healthy workplaces. Moreover, it is the way to strive environmental sustainable development. Farmers are paid better price for their crops, thus they can get more chance to develop new