3/3/2006

As national Fairtrade Fortnight approaches, Pembrokeshire Friends of the Earth have written to the mayor of Milford Haven, Rhys Sinnett, to congratulate the town on becoming the county's first designated Fairtrade Town and have contacted Trade For Life Cleddau to praise their efforts in the past few years in making it all happen.

Food campaigner for the group, Lucia Smith, said: "The town council, the Port Authority and local shops have all cooperated to show how easy it can be to use and promote Fairtrade products, not just as a one-off but on an ongoing basis.

"Crucial is the fact that this project is taking Fairtrade outside of
the supermarkets, who, for all the Fairtrade products they may sell, have shown themselves to be far more interested in paying farmers and producers the lowest price they can squeeze out of them. Now there are over a thousand Fairtrade products -- not just the traditional tea and coffee, chocolate and bananas, but nuts and oils, herbs and jams, dried fruit and wine etc, all helping to protect livelihoods in poor countries.

"The type of ongoing commitment to Fairtrade Milford Haven is providing will help the range continue to expand and, hopefully, shame the supermarkets into improving their own practices, guaranteeing stabler markets and minimum prices to farmers and high environmental and health & safety standards in the companies they source from. We sincerely hope that Haverfordwest, Pembroke and other towns in the region will all now be persuaded to commit quickly to Fairtade status."

During Fairtrade Fortnight (March 6th to 19th), Pembrokeshire Friends of the Earth will be out on the streets of the county, distributing leaflets to the public and answering any questions about Fairtrade they might have, as well as providing details of local suppliers. They will also be drawing people's attention to the important connection between Fairtrade and buying local produce from farmers' markets and box schemes, to help farmers get a fair price for their products and prevent supermarkets from driving ever more of them out of business with their unreasonable demands.