interrupcion* Blog

Carmen Iezzi, from Fair Trade Federation sent us this video today. Thanks Carmen!

John Oliver from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, hosted his stand up comedy on fair and unfair trade.

After almost a year of planning and preparing with our Argentine producer partners, we embarked on interrupcion*’s first-annual Fair Trade Certification tour with the Institute for Market-ecology, our 3rd-Party Fair Trade Certifier. We worked with the inspectors for 15 days straight (sleeping on buses!), travelling to Argentine production areas in Tucuman, La Rioja, Mendoza, Rio Negro Valley and Bariloche. IMO’s team consisted of three inspectors (Henrich from Germany, Alejandra from Chile and Teresa from Bolivia) that conducted countless worker and producer interviews, verified payment and farm records, evaluated sustainable production practices and analyzed interrupcion*’s Fair Trade commercial practices. It takes about a month for the certificaiton decision to be issued by IMO, but we are expecting good news: interrupcion* and the producers were compliant in all of IMO’s minimum requirements. We consider this a “baseline” measurement of sustainability and with support from U.S. buyers and consumers, these producers and interrupcion* will continue marching down the Fair Trade* Sustainable Development Path toward a sustainable future!

In all, we visited 9 production operations that represent over 50 producers of:

• Blueberries
• Cherries
• Apples
• Pears
• Spices for Chimichurri Sauce
• Olive Oil
• Olive Paste
• Honey

Check out our product pages for more pictures of the trip!

And, a special thanks to Joyce Wong and Leandro Martelleti for all of their insight and hard work. This accomplishment wouldn’t have been possible without them!

Keep on Fair Tradin!