Starbucks in Ethiopia coffee row

[Shirley]

US coffee chain Starbucks is denying Ethiopia earnings of £47m ($88m) a year, according to Oxfam.
The charity says Starbucks asked the National Coffee Association (NCA) to block the country's bid to trademark three types of coffee bean in the US.

Oxfam says poor farmers would have benefited from the move but the NCA says there is no economic case to support the charity's claims.

Starbucks denies initiating opposition to the trademark application.

Read the rest of this article HERE

[bazil]

sick


welcome to hell (cue music by diamondhead)

nobody should be allowed to enter buisiness without first learning ethics thoroughly

the sad thing is that these farmers are not allowed to copyright thier seeds that they selectivly bred.....but GM companies are allowed to unleash new and wonderful(crazy) things on us all....terminator seeds etcx

i dont know what is to become of us

maybe a giant sunspot will come along and all the good ones will be indoors.......and all the bad ones will be outside.......and vaporised

[Wombat]

They're mindless jerks who will be first against the wall when the revolution comes - Douglas Adams

[colhut]

I'm with Wombat.

[Stonehead]

i dont know what is to become of us

maybe a giant sunspot will come along and all the good ones will be indoors.......and all the bad ones will be outside.......and vaporised

The Other Half came up with a good idea yesterday. We should compile a list of people and companies that commit environmental and economic crimes against humanity.

They are then taken out to one of the newly created deserts that are the result of climate change, given a backpack of processed food, plastic packaging and gadgets that don't actually do much, and told to fend for themselves!

Remind me not to get on her bad side.

[Shirley]

I reckon that desert would soon become one of the most inhabited places on earth with that criteria Stoney... but yeah, I think I'll be extra nice to your OH from now on

[the.fee.fairy]

BUT. Would it be the farmers earning or the Ethiopian Government?

We all knwo that the government sits there rich and pretty whilst the people suffer.

(sorry, can't read all the article right now - stuck at work still )

[Wormella]

To answer that question, It would be the Ethiopian goverment.

Ethiopia's coffee is controlled entierly by the goverment, they set the price and Starbucks have no wayof dealing with the growers directly.

Anywhere they can -they do. They also buy the largest quantity of fair trade coffee, about 10% of theglobal fair trade coffee is brought by them. if they could ensure quantity and quality they'd by more (it does, after all, make them money in the long run). They also have a variety of community project running (in the UK and in the wider world) They do work hard on making sure the communities that produce coffee are supported and grow, it's, again, in thier best financhal interest.

Please remember Starbuck's arn't the only people that buy large amounts of coffee - they certainly arn't the largest. Sara Lee, Craft foods, Nestle - they all buy far, far more then Starbucks do.

Their good people to work for, they look after and vaule their staff. Yes, they do make stupid amounts of profits but they arn't the big evil specture people paint them out.

I should probably declare my interest - my fiance is a district coffee master in Starbucks and he's the happiest I've seen him in a long time.