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The Fairtrade Foundation would like to express deep disappointment at the recent news feature which was aired on Channel 4 News about the misrepresentation of two tea estates in India and of their use of Fairtrade premiums. Over all, the Fairtrade Foundation believes the TV report did not meet acceptable standards of accuracy, balance and fairness.

The Fairtrade Foundation always takes very seriously any complaints affecting workers and farmers in Fairtrade certified groups. It was in this spirit that we responded fully to the issues being raised by the film makers.

However, Channel 4’s news report willfully ignored detailed and comprehensive evidence supplied during two weeks of correspondence with the programme makers. Crucially, full details of water supplies to the housing on the estates were omitted, creating an unfair and distorted picture for viewers. A delay in premiums reaching the tea workers was not ‘for administrative reasons’ as alleged in the broadcast, but rooted in the Indian Government’s legislation on foreign currency transactions, which the Fairtrade system has worked hard to tackle and has now resolved. Workers on the Joint Body (the workers committee responsible for spending the Fairtrade premium), trade union representatives and the estate managers were not interviewed with regard to any of the allegations.

Although the two estates have been certified to international Fairtrade standards, they have not yet had sufficient major buyers willing to purchase their tea on Fairtrade terms. One of the farms named, Dunsandle, has never sold any tea under the Fairtrade label to the UK and less than 1% of total production internationally in the last three years. Meanwhile, in 2006, Welbeck/Kotada sold just 3% of its production to international Fairtrade markets (including the UK). It is no wonder that the workers’ lives have not been hugely changed by significant amounts of Fairtrade premium. It is only by increasing the amount sold as Fairtrade that workers will be able to receive a steady stream of additional income to use to improve their lives. The programme certainly did not make clear that the minute percentages of sales on Fairtrade terms from these two plantations are the result of tea companies being unwilling to buy on Fairtrade terms, not because of a lack of concern and competence on the part of Fairtrade organisations.

Millions of farmers and workers in rural India are facing terrible poverty as a result of the crisis in the tea industry in India which has suffered from the global 30-year decline in tea prices. The real price of tea fell by 54 per cent between the 1980s and 2005*. This has caused widespread closure of tea gardens in India with sharply rising unemployment, poverty and malnutrition among former workers as a result. Last year in West Bengal, according to an Indian press report, the crisis resulted in 150 deaths from starvation, with 15,000 malnourished people surviving on flowers and rats.

Fairtrade is one way, amongst others, to address these problems. There is ample evidence of the positive way in which both small farmers and workers across the tea industry in India have used the benefits of Fairtrade sales to begin to improve the lives in their communities. We are deeply disappointed that Indian tea workers have not been allowed to tell this story for themselves.

Fairtrade offers a way out of the crisis for tea producers. Only by shoppers choosing tea carrying the FAIRTRADE Mark will tea estates like those featured be able to earn the premiums that would allow workers to implement the projects they most need to improve their lives. We are extremely concerned that this outrageously unfair film may damage their opportunities to do just that.

* Source: FAO indicator price, The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets 2006

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For further information, phone 020 7440 7686/7695 or mobile 07770 957 451 or email eileen.maybin@fairtrade.org.uk or martine.julseth@fairtrade.org.uk.