Dear corporation: Corporate Watch and the Soil Association

by Tom Anderson – Taken from Corporate Watch’s latest magazine ‘The rules of engagement‘

In 2008 Corporate Watch decided to begin writing to companies with accusations levelled at them by grassroots campaigners, sometimes entering into lengthy discussions with them. Many of these communications were published as open letters on the Corporate Watch website, under the header Dear Corporation, along with the companies’ responses.

Response from Fyffes

In our last News Update, on 5th January 2010, we published an open letter to multinational fruit exporter Fyffes on the subject of trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Corporate Watch had been supplied with a photo of boxes of dates bearing the Fyffes logo inside a packing house in the settlement of Tomer.

Dear Corporation – An Open Letter to Fyffes

The Christmas period is one of the busiest times of the year for date importers. Tonnes of dates are imported into the UK from illegal Israeli agricultural settlements on Palestinian land. Campaigners have been focusing on Israeli companies, such as Carmel Agrexco, importing these dates into the UK but little is known about Fyffes, a transnational company that has also sourced dates from Israeli settlements.