Recent News

RECENT NEWS

Documentary Update 2007: Two intrepid film makers are traveling, interviewing and shooting a documentary based on the book. Advance screenings will be announced soon. For more information: www.exhibitafilms.com/banana

Rainforest Alliance 2005 Awardees Study Marketing: Producers and purveyors of coffee, bananas, timber products, pulp and paper and eco-tourism, are heading to New York for a May 11th daytime conference at Time Inc.'s headquarters on how best to market their "certified sustainable" products to environmentally- and socially-minded consumers, whose purchase choices are driving the fast-growing certification movement. The conference includes a press availability at 2pm. "These are some of the companies and people doing the most today to make a difference. "On large scales and small, they are showing the world how to make commercial activity sustainable, so that instead of destroying sensitive environments and perpetuating poverty, our economy actually preserves habitats and improves workers' lives and communities."

The 2005 awardees and sponsors participating in the May 11 conference and the gala include:

Corporate Sustainable Standard-Setters

The Candlewood Timber Group, Inc., Argentina / USA
Favorita Fruit Company, Ecuador
The Forestland Group, LLC, USA

Corporate Green Globe Awardee

Kraft Foods Inc.

Individual Green Globe Awardee

Alan Knight, until recently head of sustainability at B&Q, U.K.

UK Activists Call for Supermarket Reform: Friends of the Earth is part of an alliance of 15 organizations calling for a strict Statutory Code of Practice to protect supermarket suppliers and an independent Retail Regulator to enforce it. The new Code would replace the existing voluntary code introduced in 2002. The Office of Fair Trading is due to report on its audit of supermarkets compliance with the code in late February/March and a response from DTI is expected soon after. The `Breaking the Armlock' alliance says that it is already clear the existing code is not working and it must be changed without further delay. See www.breakingthearmlock.com

The alliance includes Banana Link, British Independent Fruit Growers Association, farm, Farmers for Action, Farmers' Link, Farmers' Union of Wales, Friends of the Earth, Grassroots Action on Food and Farming, International Institute for Environment and Development, National Federation of Women's Institutes, New Economics Foundation, Pesticide Action Network UK, Soil Association, Small and Family Farms Alliance and WyeCycle.

Chiquita Brands Reports Progress on Labor and Human Rights: Chiquita Brands announced recently that independent auditors have certified its banana farms in Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama to the Social Accountability 8000 labor and human rights standard. Chiquita's operations are the first to earn SA8000 certification in each of these countries. The SA8000 certifications earned to date cover operations that employ more than 12,000 people, more than half of Chiquita's total employees. Chiquita adopted SA8000 as the labor standard in its Code of Conduct in 2000 and is working toward compliance and third-party certification to SA8000 in all of its owned banana divisions. In 2002, Chiquita's banana division in Costa Rica became the first major agricultural operation in Central America to earn SA8000 certification.

Farm Trade Talks End Without Agreement in the WTO:WTO members have been stalled over how to convert all import duties into simple percentage-of-value figures that can be cranked into a formula for farm goods. Without such a common measure, countries can't assess the impact on themselves or others of the formula for farm goods. According to the Financial Times, the European Union and the US, together with Switzerland, Norway and Bulgaria, have the most tariffs needing conversion. But a proposal agreed to among these parties was rejected by the other three, who claimed that the formula would push too many of their tariffs into higher brackets.

Meanwhile fast food chains in restaurants in the US have formed an alliance to want to try to influence WTO talks on trade policies which have an impact on commodity prices. Yum! Brands, the Kentucky-based operator of KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Huts restaurants have taken the lead in forming the alliance.

Nike Reveals Identity of More Than 700 Contract Factories:In a move toward greater industry transparency and collaboration, Nike, Inc. recently voluntarily disclosed, in conjunction with the release of its new corporate responsibility report, the names and locations of the more than 700 active contract factories currently making Nike-branded products worldwide. Both the contract factory list and the report are publicly available on the company's website, www.nikeresponsibility.com.

Nike becomes the first major company in the global footwear and apparel industries to disclose publicly its contract supplier base. This level of transparency is something trade unions and non-governmental organizations have been asking of many major companies to bring greater visibility to industry-wide conditions and to support collaborative efforts to resolve systemic labor, health and safety challenges in contract factories. Nike's rationale for deciding to disclose its contract factory base is that the potential benefits to the industry and factory workers significantly outweigh the possible competitive risks of revealing the contract factories that produce the company's Nike-branded products.

But the April 22, 2005 Financial Times reports in a front page story that auditors and western buyers in an estimated one-half of all Chinese factories making goods for western companies are falsifying at least some of their records to satisfy social accountability standards. And they report further that many of these are increasingly sophisticated in their trickery to outwit the auditors.

Fresh Skirmishes in New Banana Trade War:The European Commission said recently it "regrets" the complaint to the WTO by six Latin American countries over planned EU import tariffs on bananas, but said it remains open to constructive talks. The EU response came after Ecuador, Costa Rica, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama had called on the WTO to arbitrate amid fears that the EU's planned replacement for a quota system could harm foreign banana producers. The EU commission notified the World Trade Organization (WTO) earlier this year that it intended to impose a blanket 230 euro-per-ton levy on banana imports to replace its import quota system in January 2006.

The move followed an agreement at the global trade body in 2001 aimed at settling a bruising dispute between the EU and the United States over bananas which had de-stabilized the Geneva-based global trade body.

But Latin American countries warned in February that EU's proposal could amount to a tripling of tariffs on their produce. They also fear that they would have no chance of maintaining their market share in the EU with the planned levy weighing on the prices of their bananas.

The Latin American nations have been considering what action to take for several months. During a summit in Ecuador -- the world's largest banana exporter -- in January, five Latin American presidents urged the EU to open immediate negotiations on the issue. They warned that Brussels's planned changes to its banana regime would "violate the EU's obligations before the WTO".

By contrast, EU-based banana producers -- mainly in French overseas territories -- and African, Caribbean and Pacific states (ACP) which have a preferential trade agreement with the EU, believe the European Commission's planned tariff levels are too low. The quota system, which offers privileged access to European markets for bananas produced in ACP countries, was ruled illegal by the WTO in 2000.

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