It is just five weeks since Bono launched the Product Red brand aimed at ethical consumers who want to help fight HIV/Aids in Africa. Yesterday the first two products made their debut in the UK, with an American Express card that donates 1 per cent of purchases to the cause and a Gap fashion range made in Africa. Meanwhile, TopShop, the retail chain, is following Marks and Spencer's lead in selling fair-trade cotton clothing. If these initiatives are successful, others will follow.

Cynics will see such products as a way of charging higher prices and passing on only a fraction of the extra to the people they are supposed to help. It would certainly be welcome if companies sailing under fair-trade colours were more open about the costs and benefits to them of their ethical products. But any effort that helps some of the world's poorest people earn a living is welcome - especially if it also enables them to move out of subsistence farming of commodity crops. And if projects such as Product Red are to be sustainable, they must be profitable for commercial partners.