This year’s edition of the Taste the World fair trade festival was held at St. James Cavalier in Valletta. Fair trade products, ranging from foodstuffs, handicrafts and clothes, to musical instruments and CDs of world music were on sale throughout the day from stalls manned by the volunteers that run the fair trade shop L-Arka.

One of the highlights of this year’s festival was a seminar entitled "Cotton: Caught in a dirty business". The morning seminar focused on the cultivation of cotton and the manufacture of textiles and clothes in the South of the world. In many communities, unsustainable practices in the production of cotton have a strong negative impact on people’s lives and on the natural environment. In developing countries workers are often underpaid and the spraying of pesticides causes serious breathing and other health problems. The theme "Cotton: Caught in a dirty business" highlighted the need to establish fair and sustainable practices that would benefit both the workers and the local communities, and the natural environment.

This seminar, which was open to the general public, was funded by the "Playing Fair Alternative" EU development education project, supported by Forum Malta fl-Ewropa and held in collaboration with the "Global Action Schools" project. It was led by Swedish Clean Clothes Campaign and Red Cross activist Nina Zita, and Vince Caruana, a lecturer on Environmental Education at the University of Malta.