Bananas

The World Development Movement is holding a Fairtrade banana -eating challenge at the Co-op on Pollokshaws Road , to help the Fair Trade Foundation set a world record for the largest number of Fair-trade bananas eaten over a 24-hour period.

The event will be held on the 7th of March from 10am till 2pm

Additional info

Thanks to the support of the Co-operative who agreed to host the event and donate fair trade bananas, councillors and members of the public will be invited to eat a Fairtrade banana and write their own personal messages on a graffiti wall, which will be presented to MEPs/MEP candidates in a mass lobby later in the year.

The banana is the most popular fruit in the world – people spend over £10 billion on the fruit globally. Yet, the majority of banana plantation workers do not earn enough to live and support their families with some farmers earning less than £1 per day.

The Fairtrade mark provides a guarantee to consumers that developing country producers have received a fair price for their products. Despite an increase in UK sales of Fairtrade products, only one in four bananas sold in the UK is Fairtrade.

Bananas also symbolise the challenge of international trade. Like many banana farmers, millions of people working in agriculture, manufacturing and services endure unacceptable working conditions and are kept in poverty by unfair trade rules.

This world record attempt will aim to make it clear to retailers and European policy-makers that the public wants Fairtrade products but also trade policies that put people before profits and support human rights and long-term, sustainable development.

Steve Rolfe, Chair of WDM Glasgow said: 'Millions of people across the developing world continue to face the damaging impacts of unfair trade rules that are rigged in favour of big business. Fairtrade can only take us so far in tackling the fundamental injustices of the international trade rules. We need to change the unfair trade rules that keep people in poverty.'

The World Development Movement is one of the founders of the Fairtrade Foundation and this year the two organisations are teaming up to demand a system that prioritises the needs of the world's poor and challenge the new trade deals which the European Union is currently trying to broker with over a hundred countries.

WDM argues that these deals will put European companies first, not the 1.5 billion people in these countries living on less than US$2 a day. They will particularly harm the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world, as millions of low income farmers and producers will be at risk of not being able to compete with subsidised agricultural produce from Europe flooding their markets and destroying their livelihoods.

It can take many years for the impacts of trade deals to be realised, but evidence from previous deals in Mexico and South Africa shows that they rarely benefit the poor. For example, in Mexico the trade deal led to two million people leaving their land as the price for maize collapsed – whilst corporate giants reaped the profits.

The World Development Movement is calling for these trade deals to be stopped and campaigning for Europe to adopt trade policies that put people before profits.

EDIT: Here's a picture from the banana extravaganza - not sure if any records were broken or if Norris McWhirter was there or not.

(Oh apparently the star of record breakers has sadly passed on - who is incharge or new records getting into the book now? If Cheryl Baker and Kriss Akabusi vote a tie, who gets the deciding vote?)