Fair-Trade Teas and Companies

You seem to be interested in companies that support more ethical practices with regards to their workforce and I am all for supporting companies that make sure that producers are remunerated fairly and that workers are treated fairly and provided with a safe work environment. While certification programs are useful in helping to identify companies and organizations that agree to work within and towards an agreed framework, I don’t necessarily restrict my purchases to companies baring these marks. Mainly because it often costs the producers and distributors money to display these logos and many smaller companies either can’t afford to pay for these certifications or don’t feel that they gain enough of an economic advantage by displaying them to offset the costs of having them. Certifying organizations are not always active in every country as well. I do like it when I am provided information on the provenance of my teas though. I like it when I can buy directly from the producer.
I know that I have mentioned it before but I like the policies underlined under the Sustainable Agriculture Network http://www.sanstandards.org/sitio/sections/display/2 because it focuses on both the human and natural environment you can find tea producers and distributors certified under these standards here

http://sustainablefarmcert.com/certified-producers-2/

I have to laugh because the industry standards at my old job ( which I loved so I’m not complaining) would have failed to meet some of the criteria with regards to wages and hours worked ( We were at work for at least 1.5 hrs per day that we were not paid for and I regularly worked over 12 hrs per day… )

I’m personally not one to go out of my way for fair trade teas, but I do recall recently DavidsTea listed their certified fair trade teas

http://www.davidstea.com/fair-trade

The problem is, like the organic certifications, at least in China where most of the best teas are made by small farmers and artisanal producers, that the expense of certification is only affordable for the largest mass-market plantation producers, meaning for almost all of the better teas the certification is just not an option for the producers even if they already have fair labor practices, so if you go shopping specifically for fair trade (or organic) certified tea you’re necessarily looking at a lower grade subset of teas.