| 22 April 2009
You know the price of a jar of fair-trade coffee before you reach the checkout, but how can you be sure of its ethical cost? Now techniques are being developed to tag goods with information about their entire production history, to reassure consumers that what they are buying has genuinely been ethically made.The Fair Tracing project was established by a UK team including Ann Light at Sheffield Hallam University. "When consumers buy something they want to know: is this really part of a fair process? Is it really organic, as it claims?" says Light.
The researchers are exploring techniques to store information in barcodes, to be read by consumers using hand-held readers such as camera phones. Products would be tagged when they are made and further information added at each point in the production process, for example, how much the item cost the trader and how much it was sold on for. "You could work out whether the traders along the chain have been paying their workers a decent wage by looking at the profits they are reporting," says Light. "It's an attempt to use technology to give a voice to people who are being exploited and otherwise wouldn't be heard."
Light and her colleagues have already begun working with coffee growers in southern India and vineyards in Santiago, Chile, with positive responses. "We've been explaining the benefits to ethical traders of giving out this information," says Light. "They can get credit from consumers for their good practices."