Whole Foods Market® Selects the Institute for Marketecology (IMO) as One of Three Certifiers for Whole Trade Guarantee Program

2008-11-20 16:11:04 -

The Institute for Marketecology (IMO), one of the first and most renowned eco-certifiers, has been selected as a certifier for The Whole Trade Guarantee program at Whole Foods Market. The Whole Trade Guarantee ensures that products meet Whole Foods Market"s high quality standards, producers receive better wages and working conditions, and care is given to the environment during production. The Whole Trade Guarantee program aims to help end poverty in developing countries through the payment of honest, respectable prices for products bound for Whole Foods Markets.
"We are very pleased to have IMO join the group of third-party certifiers for our Whole Trade Guarantee program. Their many years of certification and auditing experience throughout the world, and their keen understanding of the tenets of our program make this an excellent partnership," said Jim Speirs, global vice-president of purchasing for Whole Foods Market.
To achieve these goals, Whole Foods Market evaluated IMO"s Fair For Life FairTrade certification program and found IMO to be a reliable and suitable quality assurance partner.
"We are honored that our "Fair for Life" FairTrade program has been accepted by Whole Foods Market to certify their Whole Trade Guarantee products. We are optimistic that becoming a Whole Trade Guarantee third-party certifier will help us to continue our work to ensure more sustainable and fair conditions for farmers and workers worldwide while offering high-quality products to U.S. consumers who are genuinely concerned with producer welfare, the environment and the quality of their food and home products," said Dr. Rainer Bächi, CEO of the IMO Group.
Fair For Life certification is part of the IMO Social & FairTrade Programme and is based on several sets of key baseline standards, such as the ILO conventions, FLO Fairtrade standards, SA8000, and IFOAM Social Criteria. Companies with Fair for Life certification are offered incentives for continuous improvement of social and trade conditions, with transparency being the cornerstone of the Programme.
Another exciting aspect of IMO"s FairTrade certification is that it opens the prospect of fair trade certification to an array of materials and products for which it previously did not exist, including those produced for domestic markets, multi-ingredient products, wild harvested produce, and non-food products, including handicrafts, textiles and toys.
IMO has also been strongly involved in the development of the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), the AquaGAP program and the International Standard for Sustainable Wild Collection of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (ISSC-MAP/FairWild) and quality assurance procedures. All are important sustainable and eco-friendly production programs, hereby providing product integrity for a fast growing segment of responsible consumers.
For more information, please visit cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT"id=smartlink&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww .. and cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww .., or contact Kerry Hughes, M.Sc., IMO U.S. Representative at (707) 644-2354 or by email at: mailto:IMO.US.SFT@imo-group.org.


Institute for Marketecology

Kerry Hughes, 707-644-2354

mailto:IMO.US.SFT@imo-group.org