Snow Patrol singer highlights Fair Trade campaign

Belfast band Snow Patrol followed the antics of scores of high-profile musicians when they were covered in rice in a bid to highlight aid agency Oxfam’s fair trade campaign.

The band’s lead singer, Gary Lightbody, took time out from recording their latest album in Co Kerry to pose for pictures being showered in rice – a staple food for millions of the world’s poor.

Snow Patrol, which recently picked up two honours at Ireland’s Meteor Music Awards, is the latest group to agree to have bucket loads of food commodities dumped on them.

Other figures to back the campaign include U2’s Bono who was doused in sugar, Antonio Banderas posed covered in corn, REM’s Michael Stipe was left soaking in milk and Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke posed dripping in chocolate.

Lightbody said agreeing to be covered by rice for the campaign was a small sacrifice to make.

“There is such gross global trade injustice which is keeping people in some of the poorest countries being caught in the poverty cycle,” the singer said.

“It is nothing for me to get dumped on with rice if it gets the message out that to make poverty history one of the things we need to do is make trade fair.”

Oxfam’s global week of action for trade injustice begins tomorrow with its Make Trade Fair campaign which is calling for new regulations to support poverty reduction and the rights to secure livelihoods.

The aid agency said that for three billion people – half of the world’s population – rice is a staple food as well as providing an income for two billion people.

Many of the small farmers who grow rice for a living are gradually being squeezed out as developing countries are being forced to accept imports of cheap, and often dumped, food.

Oxfam claimed its latest research into rice dumping provided further evidence of the way in which the world’s poorest farmers were being exploited by rich countries for profits.

The aid agency says that poor countries have come under enormous pressures from rich nations through trade agreements, as well as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to liberalise their economies and remove import tariffs on crops.

Oxfam claimed this flood of imports into the countries can destroy local livelihoods and the prospects of rural development.

It pointed to other countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia which have successfully used import tariffs to help secure poor farmers’ work.

Oxfam called upon people to join the five million already signed up to its Big Noise petition at www.maketradefair.com, which will be presented to ministers at the World Trade Organisation meeting in December 2005.

A white band to campaign for fair trade can also be purchased from any of the Oxfam shops across Ireland.