Instead, as you sit there drinking your favorite blend of coffee, ask yourself these questions: Where were these coffee beans grown, and how are the coffee plants and the laborers who tend them treated? What? You don't know? You never thought of these concerns until now? If you are a registered voter in Berkeley, California, some referendum campaigners want you to think of those things. Is this another example of Bizzare Berkeley? Maybe. Is this an effort to increase consumer awareness of human rights problems in South America? Maybe. Or is this an attempt to target America's newest - and probably soon-to-be Supreme Court-approved "suspect class": coffee drinkers?
Coffee drinkers as a Supreme Court-designated "suspect class"? Perhaps. But more on that later. Keep drinking and reading.
What the Berkeley referendum campaigners have in their grinder is a proposal that would require all coffee sold in Berkeley to be "fair trade" or "shade-grown" coffee. As the city where Pete's Coffee (the place that indirectly spawned Starbuck's) got its start, Berkeley arguably rivals Seattle for the title of "Latte Land". But asking for fair trade or shade-grown coffee is not just a way to show you know beans about the brew. "Fair trade" coffee comes from a select list of growers who pay to be listed in the Fair Trade Coffee Registry. In addition to paying for the listing, these growers pledge that they do not exploit their workers, wages, or coffee market prices. Nobody inspects these fair trade registered growers. With coffee prices at near-record lows, the obvious conclusion is that fair trade status simply means you pay to join the Registry in the same sort of way as you might pay to have an advertisement listing in a newspaper or Web site.
