Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Ethiopia vs. Starbucks

OK. Someone's gonna have to set the record straight here. Or is this one in the "wait-and-see-what-the-judge-says-before-making-a-decision" category?

The accusation: Starbucks has positioned itself as "Coffee That Cares" to gain a loyal customer base. Now they've become greedy hypocrites and are cheating Ethiopian farmers out of opportunities to make fair profits on their coffee.

Big Guy exploits Little Guy for profits. Little Guy starves.

The defense: "No, we're not!" (otherwise known as "nuht-uh")

The rebuttal: "Yes, you are." ("mmmm-hmmm")

So Starbucks looks guilty. It must be true. After all, I read it on the internet!

Does anyone have any insight on this one?

2 Comments:

At 6:28 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not sure where the truth lies, but this is from what Starbucks is saying (it's a Q & A from their web site)

http://www.starbucks.com/aboutus/pressdesc.asp?id=743

 
At 4:38 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi,
You might want to check out the Oxfam site...they have some information on this and they are also starting a letter-writing campaign to get Starbucks to start letting Ethiopian farmers own the rights to their coffee names. The site is:

http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whatyoucando/act_now/campaign_action/coffee

You might also want to check out a new documentary called Black Gold that is highlighting the plight of Ethiopian coffee farmers. I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard good things about it.
Chanda

 

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