With regard to organic food and cotton, what is your approach?
We do have many organic fair trade products in our range and this is what many of our customers want. However, sometimes organic approaches make something unacceptably expensive. Many small producers find it hard to afford certification even when their produce is organic, so it cannot then be labelled as such.
Unlike Fairtrade criteria, criteria for organic products vary from country to country. For a producer to get a product certified as organic could cost £5,000-10,000 – rarely worthwhile for small-scale producers.
To get the Fairtrade Mark costs virtually nothing. It’s a question of priorities.
