Certifications (9)
- B Corporation certification — A certification for whole companies rather than farms or lots — it audits how a business is owned, governed and run, and says nothing whatsoever about the coffee.
- C.A.F.E. Practices — Starbucks’ own coffee-buying rulebook — more than 200 checks on how a farm is run, audited by outside firms but owned, scored and ultimately decided by one company.
- Carbon-negative coffee — Coffee whose producer claims to pull more CO₂ out of the air than it puts in — a claim with no agreed rulebook behind it, made almost entirely by the companies who benefit from it.
- Ethiopian fine coffee trademarking — The Ethiopian government’s decision to register Sidamo, Yirgacheffe and Harar as trademarks it owns outright and licenses to roasters for free — the strategy behind the 2006–07 Starbucks row, and a working alternative to the Champagne-style geographic indication.
- Fair trade coffee — The oldest and most recognised ethical label in coffee — a price floor, a community premium and an audit, all attached to farmer cooperatives rather than to farms, and saying nothing whatsoever about how the coffee tastes.
- Geographical indication — The legal instrument that turns a coffee place-name into property — what a geographical indication actually protects, the treaty machinery behind it (TRIPS Article 22, WIPO, the Lisbon system), the difference between an indication of origin and a denomination of origin, the coffee names protected this way, and why Ethiopia chose trademarks instead.
- Rainforest Alliance — The New York nonprofit behind the green frog seal — a sustainability certification for coffee farms that says nothing at all about how the coffee tastes.
- Sustainable Agriculture Network — The NGO coalition that wrote the rulebook behind the Rainforest Alliance green frog seal — the standards body most coffee drinkers have never heard of, standing behind a logo they have.
- UTZ — The Dutch-Guatemalan coffee certification label whose name means “good coffee” in Mayan — absorbed by the Rainforest Alliance in 2018 and now being retired, though its seal is still printed on old bags and old farm profiles.