Normative Ethics: Fair Trade (McDonalds)

Fair Trade
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McDonalds Corporation is famed as one the biggest fast food firm in the world. Having been started in the year 1940, the company prides in over 60 million customers that are spread out in the 119 countries where it has a physical presence (Allison, 2006). The restaurants are managed as the firm’s outlets, affiliated or as franchises of the firm. Either way the firm has managed to take the lead on the fast food industry raking in more than $25 billion in revenues annually and close to $6 billion in profits.
With reference to fast foods, the company has revolutionized the industry, offering price friendly products such as hamburgers, soft drinks, desserts, chicken, sandwiches, meat pies and French fries among others.In the recent, after evaluating the advent of the coffee drinking culture among the Americansacross the states, the company decided to take a plunge into the business. As such they came up with the McCafé as the brand name for their coffee, to compete with companies such as Starbucks. Much like the unhealthy food products, while working there I also witnessed the unraveling of the fair beans problem(Cowan, 2014).
The ethics behind fair trade is that the farmers make as much money as the companies who they sell their products too. However that is not always the case. Companies like McDonald’s make billions annually from the sale of the coffee at their restaurants. Much of the coffee is brought in from Brazil and the state of the farmers that are hard at work to meet the market standards are deplorable. Although the farmers are working as hard to meet the ever increasing standards of the coffee markets, their efforts go unnoticed as the prices remain relatively the same. The fair-trade beans trade has brought some form of relieve to long struggles of the coffee farmers at the hands of companies like McDonald’s.Ironically, the prices have only grown by roughly ten percent. While the consumer news have been abuzz with the headlines on the fair trade beans, these beans only account for less that 2.2 percent of all the coffee that is consumed in the marke...