Historically, the term “fair trade” has meant many things. The Fair Trade League was
36 in Britain in 1881 to restrict
37 from foreign countries. In the United States, businesses and labor unions
38 “fair trade” laws to construct构建what economist Joseph Stiglitz calls “barriers to imports.” These so called “anti-dumping(反倾销)” laws allow a company that
39 a foreign one of selling a product below cost to request that the government charge收费special taxes to protect it from “unfair”
40 .
Such dark protectionist thoughts are far from the
41 of the organizers of the United Kingdom’s annual “Fairtrade Fortnight”. Their
42 aim is to raise the price paid to developing-country farmers for their
43 by cutting out the inflated profits虚抬利润of the middlemen on whom they
44 for getting their goods to distant markets. Fair-trade products
45 cocoa, coffee, tea, and bananas do not compete with domestic European production, and
46 do not have a protectionist motive(动机).
This is how it works: In
47 for being paid a guaranteed price and meeting “agreed labor and environmental standards” (minimum wages, no farm chemicals ), poor-country farming cooperatives(合作社) receive a FAIRTRADE mark for their products, given
48 by the FAIRTRADE Labeling Organization. This mark
49 supermarkets and other businesses to sell the products at a higher than
50 price . Third-world farmers get their income increased,
51 first-world consumers get to feel virtuous: a marriage made in heaven.
The fair-trade movement,
52 in the 1980’s, has been growing rapidly. In a significant breakthrough in 1997, the British House of Commons
53 to serve only fair-trade coffee. By the end of 2007, more than 600 producers’ organizations,
54 1.4 million farmers in 58 countries, were selling fair-trade products. Today, a quarter of all bananas in UK supermarkets are sold under a FAIRTRADE mark. But FAIRTRADE-labeled products still represent a very
55 share—typically less than 1%—of global sales of cocoa, tea, coffee, etc.
| 小题1: | | A．discovered | B．founded | C．encouraged | D．promoted |
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| 小题2: | | A．imports | B．exports | C．output | D．trade |
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| 小题3: | | A．disobey | B．break | C．use | D．study |
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| 小题4: | | A．suspects | B．needs | C．wants | D．advertises |
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| 小题5: | | A．agreement | B．contract | C．game | D．competition |
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| 小题6: | | A．worries | B．minds | C．comments | D．projects |
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| 小题7: | | A．educational | B．political | C．worthy高尚 | D．immediate |
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| 小题8: | | A．favour | B．benefit | C．interest | D．produce (n.农产品) |
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| 小题9: | | A．depend | B．spend | C．look | D．apply |
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| 小题11: | | A．instead | B．otherwise | C．therefore | D．anyhow |
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| 小题12: | | A．fear | B．store | C．preparation | D．exchange |
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| 小题13: | | A．secretly | B．publicly | C．officially | D．successfully |
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| 小题14: | | A．urges | B．enables | C．orders | D．forces |
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| 小题15: | | A．normal | B．potential | C．lowest | D．best |
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| 小题17: | | A．launched | B．arranged | C．invented | D．developed |
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| 小题18: | | A．wanted | B．refused | C．had | D．decided |
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| 小题19: | | A．telling | B．representing | C．Choosing | D．receiving |
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| 小题20: | | A．small | B．little | C．good | D．large |
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