We all know Fairtrade. The Fairtrade bananas that have you feeling good about yourself and the Fairtrade coffee that has you washing your mouth out, it tastes so bad. But the range of fair-traded goods has tended to cluster on the semi-luxury fringe of the market – ethnic handicrafts and non-essential foodstuffs from parts of the world that the global middle-class might feel a bit guilty about.

But Fairtrade has just expanded to take in Fairtrade gold. No longer will bridegrooms buying wedding bands, or people undergoing ornamental dentistry, or even common or garden commodity speculators have to fret about benefiting from the exploitation of impoverished miners labouring their foreshortened lives away in dangerous, dirty and degrading conditions. Probably in a war zone.

Fairtrade gold, despite being smelted down and re-fashioned into a thousand different forms, will be traceable. Fairtrade gold will be the product of airy, climate-controlled mines where happy unionized workers, operating under international health and safety standards, produce free-range nuggets of gold ore which are then smelted down by certified humane processes that cause no environmental damage, respect animal rights and are compatible with all major religions.

So that’s alright then.

But does it go far enough?

A number of Thai entrepreneurs have seen the opportunity to open up new markets for an extended range of ethical goods and services.

One labour agency is advertising Fairtrade domestics. These are maids, cooks, gardeners, drivers and nannies whose entry into the profession is certifiably voluntary and who could have instead chosen to be brain surgeons, high court judges or football pundits. Before entering the service of those whose disposable income is many times their own and whose working hours are many times less, they are thoroughly briefed on human rights, the Thai labour code and relevant ILO conventions, so that they are fully aware of their rights.

They are trained by qualified instructors to international standards of housekeeping, cookery, horticulture, limousine polishing and childcare. Some are even given lessons in Basic English for Servants at reputable institutions specializing in English for Special Purposes.

Upper- and middle-class employers, both Thai and foreign, can rest assured that in engaging the services of a Fairtrade domestic, they have no fear of being accused of economic exploitation, cultural or ethnic superiority, or moral laziness, while someone else cleans their toilets, their crockery, their herbaceous borders, their bodywork, and their children’s bottoms.

Another enterprising manufacturer out in Minburi is marketing a line of Fairtrade riot control equipment. His company cannot as yet offer a full range of products (the international specifications of ethical electro-shock batons remain stalled in a UN committee). But police forces with a conscience can still order Fairtrade body armour (made from kevlar twine handwoven by third world artisans following traditional designs), Fairtrade leg-irons (in non-toxic bio-degradable plastic derived from plant oils, with rounded edges guaranteed not to cause ankle lacerations) and Fairtrade tear gas (made exclusively from naturally occurring aromatic resins and not pre-tested on animals).

These products allow riot control officers and rioters themselves the confidence of knowing that demonstrations and their violent suppression respect a full range of economical, social and cultural rights while heads are being cracked open and people vomit from gas inhalation.

Rumours have it that more Fairtrade initiatives for the Thai market are in the planning stage: Fairtrade plagiarized academic papers; Fairtrade bribery of traffic police; even Fairtrade electoral processes that ensure ethical vote-buying.

Not all Fairtrade products have proved successful, however. An attempt to set workable standards for Fairtrade online newspaper satire columns was abandoned as futile. ‘Technically, it should be possible to get columnists and their editors to work in an ethically proper way,’ said a researcher. ‘But when we looked at the kind of people attracted to this line of work, we just gave up.’