Patrick Shein is an authority on fair trade gold issues. He is the founding director of the Ethical Bullion Company and a member of the board of the Association of Responsible Mining. Here, he writes about scalability issues in other fair trade products, creating a context for his belief that small scale and

Earlier this year, this blog reported protests in the US at Lev Leviev’s store. Now, an article on Africa.com reports how, Lev Leviev, one of the kings of the diamond sector, fires 148 striking diamond polishers, represented by the Mine Workers Union of Namibia.

New U.S. regulations governing the import and export of rough diamonds were published on May 21 in the Federal Register http://www.gpoaccess.gov/fr/. The new regulations enhance U.S. Government oversight of the rough diamond trade in an effort to strengthen the international Kimberley Process Certification Scheme.