# Oxfam to stop using Fairtrade label

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2003/01/19/oxfam-stop-using-fairtrade-label/
- Published: 2003-01-19T00:00:00+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

Oxfam’s pioneering Fairtrade brand, developed in the 1960s, is to be scrapped due
to “commercial reasons.”
The idea of selling products sourced from developing countries
while paying their creators a fair price saw Oxfam offering around 1,700 Fairtrade
items in the mid-1990s. However, the proliferation of loyalty cards and supermarket
deals meant that price rather than ethics was still a dominant concern for many.
On the other hand, the success of ethical brands such as the Co-op and the Body 
Shop, together with other charities selling fairtrade items, demonstrate that the
Fairtrade movement has grown considerably and changed. It could be argued that Oxfam’s
Fairtrade brand was no longer required.

The decision to drop the Fairtrade brand followed a review of the charity’s fair
trading operation in 2002. As a result the charity’s trading arm started withdrawing
its Fairtrade products from its 400 shops at the end of 2002.

Read “Oxfam bows to market and scraps Fairtrade brand” by Mark Townsend in The Observer.

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