Is your Shea butter Fair Trade certified?

Hi,

Is your organic Shea butter fair trade certified? How do you recommend to store it?

Thank you.

Vermont Soap chooses not to participate in the Fair Trade program which we feel charges excessive rates for dubious results. We do however pay well above market rates to the women supplying our vendor.

We also engage in an unusual practice: Vermont Soap insists on a strict quality control regarding the shea kernels that go into our butter. The spoiled nuts are fine for short-term, local use but shea butter made from them will have too short a shelf life for our standards. We let the workers keep these culled shea kernels as a bonus, giving them free stock to make their local/family’s shea butter.

I truly believe that the shea butter polishing process we developed makes superior butter. I taste, smell and feel our raw materials and over time began developing an allergy to the latex in shea butter. So we experimented and came up with a way to remove almost all of the latex from the butter without voiding the organic certification on it.

Store shea butter and ALL natural products in a cool dry place away from sunlight (and any other ultra-violet light sources such as fluorescent bulbs). You want to avoid temperature extremes and exposure to air and light.

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