Nestle’s fair trade four fingered Kit Kat.

Date: 7 December 2009

This morning it’s been announced that Nestle will be gaining the Fair Trade mark for its four-fingered Kit Kat.

Although the World Development Movement is pleased that some small farmers in the Cote d’Ivoire will earn a little more as a result of Nestle’s four-fingered, Kit Kat’s move to Fairtrade, this is a long way from achieving trade justice.

It must be put into perspective: the Fairtrade mark only applies to sales of Kit Kat’s four-finger bars in the first instance – and the premium represents less than one per cent of their Kit Kat sales. We won’t be satisfied until we see a deeper transformation of their business model, not just in cocoa for one product, but for all products. Nestle’s current model is based on paying farmers in the developing world a pittance whilst the company rakes in hundreds of millions of pounds of profits every year.

Nestle holds a staggering amount of power in the UK confectionery market, and the use of the Fairtrade label should not distract attention from Nestle’s continued lobbying against any reforms to the unfair trade rules that keep the price of cocoa low.

With Fairtrade products now firmly established in the market, all of us in the Fairtrade movement should now raise our game by pushing for political action to ensure farmers in the Cote d’Ivoire and all around the world receive a fair price for all their produce.