Fairer Cookies

At the potluck, one of the house's residents called me out on not using fair trade ingredients in my chocolate chip cookies.  She didn't need to point the potential discrepancy between my interest in human and non-human welfare, as it's something I'm aware of and sensible to.  Historically the compromise comes from the limits of what I can afford: being a vegan is inexpensive and (given my habits) economical, buying items fair trade (or even organic) is prohibitively expensive for the same volumes.  I emphasised that because if I'm actually interested in fair trade, an obvious solution is to not spend more than before, but just buy less.   It's not a real decrease in value, because I'm trading in one thing (biomass) for another (good conscience and fair wages), where good conscience on this point is material to other people whose labour I'm benefiting from: it is something that matters.

It's something I actually practise in media consumption already.  I can't afford all the media I might like, so I simply limit the quantity and range I enjoy.  Rather than pirate something because I want it but can't afford it, I simply don't consume it.  It's not a huge loss, because I still have the same amount of time, and end up filling it up with other things.  Also, large repositories of quality media are open to me via things like Netflix and emusic, so I'm not a complete luddite (here misused :D).

So I have to ask myself how much I actually care about fair trade.  I don't find organic or local to be necessary adjectives to apply to my food (I'm all for eating inorganic material found on remote asteroids).  In New Zealand, I briefly tried switching to fair trade chocolate bars, and failed for ignoble reasons.  The expense was the excuse, but at the time I also ate a huge volume of chocolate and was in love with the selection Cadbury provided.  Cadbury was also at the time making a switch in their fat component (something to do with palm oil) to make it more ethical and environmentally friendly, which helped me justify the status quo.  When I let myself consider it, though, I see the portion of responsibility I share for the farmer's situation, and I think I can deal with recalibrating the amount of chocolate consumed to allow myself to afford fair trade chocolate and stop hiding behind "but the expense!  I'm a poor student!" argument now.  (That's also considering the impact reduced chocolate demand has.)

That said, I don't feel inclined to boycott non-fair trade chocolate and products completely, but I'm going to give them a higher priority and stop pricing them out of my purchasing consideration. :D

Safe-to-eat cookie dough!

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