The LA Times gave some room to talking about fair trade and other certification programs for coffee today in an article titled “Green Standard for Coffee Beans.”

Cool — Woulda been even cooler if the article actually had more relevance to the US. Written by a dude for the Financial Times, the info within is very Europe-focused; bits of it, like the parts about Utz Kapeh, really have almost no relevance to the US, let alone Los Angeles in particular.

And the article in itself isn’t v. informative — Basically the article sez there are a buncha different certification programs for coffee, that overall the programs are having positive effects in coffee-growing countries.

Mostly, the article’s concerned with whether the certification programs are tapping into the mainstream, pointing to Kraft, Yuban, and McDonald’s doing some certification, without bothering to examine what the entry of these big companies might mean (potential for greenwashing, etc.).

Eh. Maybe more people will at least learn about fair trade and organic certification, and research the isses for themselves –

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