Thank you for responding to this and sharing the official responses from Fairtrade Int. Unfortunately it seems like everything we try to put in place to pull people out of poverty or to change one aspect of the world (such as Rainforest Alliance) will end up being criticised by somebody. We have to continue fighting and supporting and as you say realise that this is just one tool and not a cure-all. I for one will continue supporting Fairtrade because I think it is an important step in achieving a fairer, more equitable society, certainly in the context of developing countries whom we exploit for our own benefit.
I’ll stop ranting as I fear I’ll go well off-topic!
BTW, I noticed you mention about only being able to post 2 links - this is because you still have the ‘new user’ status on your account. You need to do a bit more interaction on the forum and you’ll be moved up. See this for an explanation about the user access levels