I know the Valentine’s Day question keeping you up at night. Should I opt for VeriFlora certified flowers? Or for fair trade certified flowers?

Okay — maybe not. But now that we finally have fair trade certified flowers on the market, the question’s gotta come up sooner or later. What are the differences, and which certification is “better”? After all, both certifications claim high social and environmental benefits — as well as high-quality flowers:

• Veriflora’s soundbyte: “The ‘VeriFlora™ Certified Sustainably Grown’ label is your guarantee that flowers and potted plants have been produced in an environmentally and socially responsible manner and meet the highest standards for freshness and quality.”
• Fair trade’s soundbyte: “Fair Trade certification on flowers guarantees that growers meet strict social and environmental standards and that workers receive a premium to invest in community development.”

To find out the real differences, you have to delve deeper. For starters, who’s running these certification programs? Fair trade certification’s done by the nonprofit TransFair USA. While TransFair often gets critiqued — from corporations for being too tough, and from fair trade activists for being too lenient — the org’s been quite successful of late at both introducing big corporations into fair trade certification and retaining — and in Dean’s Bean’s case, bringing back — die-hard fair trade companies.

In contrast, VeriFlora certification’s done by a company called Scientific Certification Systems — which has the unfortunate distinction of also running Starbucks’ CAFE practices program, which has standards that are lower than, but often marketed as superior to, fair trade certification. In fact, the Sacramento Bee found that SCS didn’t even visit a farm that it had given CAFE certification to; an Africa-based company was hired to do the job — and apparently didn’t do it very well, because when SacBee started investigating, the inspector person got fired for doing a bad job.

That said, VeriFlora standards are different from CAFE standards. So: How do the VeriFlora and fair trade certifications stack up? That answer’s rather time-consuming to come by. While the Fair trade certification standards for flowers is available in a modest 12-page document (PDF), VeriFlora’s standards come in a whopping 127-pager (PDF). Turns out, the reason the VeriFlora document’s so long’s because it contains all manner voluntary and non-mandatory criteria….

The main difference between VeriFlora and fair trade certifications: While VeriFlora generally falls back on the laws set by the local government, fair trade generally sets its own baseline standards — which are likely to be a tougher standards than the labor laws (or lack there of) in many countries. For example, fair trade certification REQUIRES a minimum of 3 weeks of paid annual leave, and REQUIRES that all workers receive medical examinations at the employer’s expense. VeriFlora, in contrast, requires only that full-time workers receive “a vacation plan that meets national or local law”; employers aren’t required to provide medical services at their own expense, although they must make sure that workers be given time and transportation to access medical care.

The other difference between the certification programs: While VeriFlora simply requires that workers be ALLOWED to organize, fair trade certification REQUIRES workers to organize into a “joint body.” Why? With fair trade certification, workers receive a fair trade premium — over and above regular wages — based on a percentage of the sales price of the flowers. (The amount of the fair trade premium is between 8 to 12% of value of the flowers at the customs front of the exporting country; more details on page 12 of this PDF) That premium has to be spent on community development initiatives, and the joint body — with leaders democratically elected by the workers — decides what initiatives those will be. VeriFlora too encourages community development, but basically leaves the issue at the discretion — and purse strings — of the employer.

So fair trade certification appears to be the tougher standard. However, new complications arise here: Some VeriFlora certified flowers are also organic certified, while no organic AND fair trade certified flowers exist — which can seem odd, since both VeriFlora and fair trade certifications agree that flower farms should try to go organic. However, fair trade certified flowers just came onto the US market last fall — and the farms producing them haven’t yet gotten organic certification. VeriFlora, on the other hand, has been around much longer, giving their farms time to move toward certification. In addition, VeriFlora certifies farms in the US and Canada, which often are more readily able to pursue organic certification, financially or otherwise. Fair trade certification, in contrast, only applies to products originating from “third world” countries.

We also have to keep in mind that, at this point, even the VeriFlora AND fair trade certified flowers combined add up to a very small percentage of the flower market. And outside a few pockets communities, fair trade flowers are only available online via 1-800 Flowers and samsclub.com. Comparatively, VeriFlora certified flowers are much more widely available; Trader Joe’s sometimes carries some, for example. And VeriFlora certified flowers still smell much sweeter than conventional flowers.

So if you’re buying flowers locally, try to look for organic or VeriFlora certified flowers. If you’re buying online anyway, however, go for flowers that are fair trade certified, or VeriFlora AND organic certified.

Wouldn’t it be great if we just had one pretty flower certification that incorporated all these details into a nice tidy rosy bunch, instead of what seems like an endless proliferation of certification programs? After all, it can get costly for flower producers to worry about — and pay for — all these different certifications, as Amy Stewart, author of Flower Confidential (which I reviewed here) points out…

[crossposted on ViroPop]

Tags: fairtrade, flowers, veriflora, organic

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