CIW delegation visits supermarket giant Ahold

CIW delegation visits supermarket giant Ahold (owner of Giant, Stop and Shop) on home turf in Amsterdam, Holland!

Next meeting set for early June with US branch…

Campaign for Fair Food business on the other side of the Atlantic last week brought a small delegation from the CIW (pictured above are Laura Germino, Coordinator of the CIW’s Anti-Slavery Campaign, and Lucas Benitez, CIW co-founder) to the corporate headquarters of the international supermarket giant Ahold in Amsterdam, Holland.

The CIW delegation requested a meeting with Amsterdam-based executives at Ahold’s home office to ensure that the company’s key decision makers heard directly from CIW representatives about the urgency of the human rights crisis in the fields, and about the opportunity that exists for Ahold to address human rights violations in its supply chain through the Campaign for Fair Food.

The meeting was positive and helped lay the groundwork for what Ahold representatives promised would be a constructive meeting with the US branch in early June. Later that evening, the CIW delegation met with an exciting and diverse group of Amsterdam-based allies, who decided to begin a local postcard campaign in support of the Campaign for Fair Food.

Earlier this year, we posted pictures of tomatoes for sale at one of Ahold’s stores here in the US that came from Six L’s, one of the Immokalee-based farms that used enslaved workers in the 2008 Navarrete case to pick tomatoes. It seems appropriate to post those pictures again, and to include the accompanying reflection as a timely recap. Check back in early June for more on Ahold and, in the meantime, check out the recap below, from March 17th, 2010:

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“And speaking of slavery… Amsterdam-based supermarket leader Ahold (owner of two of this country’s best-known grocery chains, Giant and Stop and Shop) has a situation on its hands.

With its annual shareholders meeting just around the corner — and growing shareholder awareness of Ahold’s refusal to work with the CIW sure to make itself an issue at the meeting — news comes in the form of fresh photographic evidence that Ahold continues to purchase tomatoes from Six L’s, one of the growers that used the enslaved workers from the Navarrete case to pick tomatoes.

The picture above was taken yesterday at a Giant store in Plymouth Meeting, PA.

Representatives of the CIW were in the area thanks to Villanova University, which recognized the CIW with its 2010 Adela Dwyer-St. Thomas of Villanova Peace Award. As part of the national Supermarket Week of Action, a delegation of local Fair Food activists and the CIW representatives visited the Giant store and found Six L’s brand “Cherry Berries” tomatoes prominently displayed in the produce section. They even bought a couple of boxes to share the news with the audience at the award presentation later that day at Villanova.

The picture graphically underscores one of the most vexing truths of this country’s food industry unearthed by the Campaign for Fair Food: The vast majority of retail food companies are astonishingly unwilling to change suppliers, even when those suppliers are found to be using slave labor. It doesn’t matter what they say to the public about social responsibility — virtually every company has a “zero tolerance” policy for forced labor — retail food companies are, with very few exceptions, hypocritical in their purchasing practices and resistant to change even when presented with indisputable factual evidence of abuse in their suppliers’ fields.

That’s not an attack, it’s just a fact.

Ahold, it seems, is no exception. But it’s one thing for a company like Publix to take a stand against consumers who are calling for it to cut off purchases from growers tainted by slavery. The market for sustainable food is still in its infancy in this country and consumers are just now learning about the human rights violations that are so commonplace behind the fruits and vegetable they eat.

But Europe is a different story. In the Netherlands where Ahold’s headquarters is located, the demand for social responsibility and the market for fair trade products are well-established and growing. Ahold will have to answer for its purchasing practices to a different audience at its upcoming shareholder meeting, and stonewalling its consumers on slavery won’t be an option.

If Ahold doesn’t make a change soon, things should be even more interesting than usual in Amsterdam this coming April. Stay tuned…”