The farmers should receive more
It took awhile — decades! — for Kona coffee farmers to finally receive some compensation for retailers falsely labeling ordinary coffee beans as “Kona” coffee. (Kona Coffee Labeling Settlements Top $15 million, WHT 2/22/22). The farmers should receive much more, of course, but they would have gotten nothing had it not been for a 2019 lawsuit calling out the duplicity and mendacity on the part of major retailers, distributors, wholesalers and sellers. And even with the payout, still left in the endless legal limbo is the problem of small percentages of real Kona coffee being mixed with much larger amounts of ordinary junk coffee but then still being sold, legally, as “Kona” coffee.
What’s interesting in the settlement, however, is the big corporate retailers — Costco, Walmart, and Safeway — who do business in Kona and who apparently had no scruples about sticking it to Kona coffee farmers on their home turf. If you don’t already know, the business model for every American corporation is “lie, cheat, deceive and steal,” so why should these companies be any different? The only constituency they and their fellow corporations care about is themselves and making more profit, rarely taking any responsibility for marketplace wrongdoing even when convicted in a court of law. Ah, America, the land of duplicity.
John Kitchen
Kona
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A high cost for the animals
My friend and I recently visited the Big Island from Canada and had a marvelous experience. The people were friendly and the weather was great. However, we had one negative experience that I’d like to write to you about.
We visited the Octopus Farm near the airport in mid-February, and were quite surprised to see they’re kept in very small containers with just a fake plastic rock to hide under.
We were told not to touch their sensitive heads, yet witnessed one try to swim and bonk its head quite hard into the side of the container then use a tentacle to rub the area. We felt quite sad to see that.
Then we learned they have the octopus mate, and they produce around 700,000 eggs, however the facility states they have never been able to keep them alive for more than 12 days. Once the octopus have mated, they die, so two new ones are caught in the wild. I don’t see how this is a sustainable project, so wonder what its purpose is.
The Tripadvisor site doesn’t allow any social commentary, hence my review wasn’t printed, and all the ones about this place state it’s a wonderful experience to pet octopi. It seems to be such a high cost to the animals in order to allow people to pet them.
Moni Schiller
Kelowna, Canada
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