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Food labeling 101: GMO, organic, and other common grocery labels decoded

A quick, easy guide to nine commonly seen (and misunderstood) food labels, from 'GMO' to 'grass-fed.'

3. Fair trade

PRNewsFoto/Green & Black's/FIle
A Fair Trade Certified logo.

Definition: “Fair trade” is a designation that focuses on workers’ rights in developing countries. There is no set description; in general, products are certified by one of several international fair trade federations. Fair trade coffee, for instance, is meant to be less exploitative of small-scale farmers and to reduce the environmental impact of coffee farming. Certified fair trade factories prohibit child labor and try to ensure that workers are making a living wage.

What it means for you:  Best-case scenario, it means that the workers on the other end of the product you buy aren’t being exploited by Western companies. There has been much debate among economists about whether fair trade practices actually help those they intend to reach, or if the money gets too far diverted elsewhere. Because the fair trade designation extends to a wide variety of industries and companies can be certified by several different organizations, actual fair trade practices can vary. It’s best to research individual companies to see if you support their practices.  

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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