For pickers, Slavery tastes like tomatoes

By Greg Asbed, Special to The Palm Beach Post

When farm workers from the camped outside of Taco Bell corporate headquarters in Irvine, Calif., last month — with dozens staging an unprecedented hunger strike, calling on Taco Bell to take responsibility for sub-poverty wages and labor abuses in the Florida fields where its tomatoes are picked — they asked reporters to pose one simple question to Taco Bell’s spokespeople:

Can Taco Bell guarantee to its customers that the tomatoes in its chalupas and quesadillas were not picked by slave labor?

The workers did not ask the question lightly. Over the past five years, U.S. Justice Department officials have successfully prosecuted five slavery rings operating in the fields of South Florida. The , the organization spearheading the Taco Bell boycott, was instrumental in the discovery, investigation and prosecution of four of those cases. Three of the cases involved tomato pickers in the Immokalee area, the heart of Florida’s $600 million tomato industry.

Given that farm managers involved in the slavery cases have denied any knowledge of the slavery operations on their farms, it would be virtually impossible for any tomato buyer further along the distribution chain to claim ethically that its products were free of forced labor.

Yet this was what a Taco Bell representative had to say to one reporter, Wisconsin radio journalist Mike Moon, when he asked the workers’ question: “Slavery was abolished years ago in this country, Mike, in case you didn’t know.”

On the 10th day of the farm workers’ hunger strike, religious leaders from across the country asked the workers to end their fast and to allow supporters to take up their cause. Archbishop Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, leader of the country’s largest Catholic community, wrote to the workers: “I encourage Catholics to stand with you by fasting during Lent as a sign of solidarity with you and in prayer that you soon see a successful conclusion to this campaign. As a sign of goodwill, I encourage the leadership of Taco Bell to meet with you in the coming days to seek a fair and peaceful solution to this dispute.”

When religious leaders who broke bread with the striking farm workers tried to deliver Cardinal Mahony’s message to Taco Bell executives, security guards locked the doors to the company’s glass skyscraper. The delegation was forced to slide the letter under the door.

Taco Bell insisted that the company would not “get involved in a supplier’s labor dispute,” and that the workers’ efforts were “misdirected.” Compare Taco Bell’s response with that of the U.S. chocolate industry when faced with the revelation of modern-day slavery in its supply chain.

In June 2001, Sudarsan Raghavan, Knight Ridder’s Nairobi bureau chief, and Sumana Chatterjee, Knight Ridder Washington correspondent, produced “A Taste of Slavery,” a shocking special report on their investigation of labor abuses in West African cocoa plantations — the source of more than 40 percent of the American chocolate industry’s cocoa beans.

After initially attempting to distance themselves from their suppliers’ sins, the chocolate giants — companies such as Hershey’s and Mars — did an about-face and took responsibility for the human rights abuses in their supply chain. In an article Knight Ridder newspapers headlined, “Chocolate industry accepts responsibility for child labor practices,” Larry Graham, president of the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, said, “We need to be permanently concerned with where cocoa comes from, the impact of cocoa on the environment, and how the workers are treated.” He continued, “That is where the industry has changed forever.”

In a historic move, chocolate manufacturers, human rights groups, unions and the Ivory Coast government signed a pact aimed at ending labor abuse in the industry. According to the same article, “Experts say it will be the first time an agricultural industry has taken responsibility for its product from harvesting to market.”

Lucas Benitez of the , a farm worker who has picked tomatoes and participated in the investigation of several of the recent slavery cases in Immokalee, is disgusted by Taco Bell’s indifference. He points to a company policy — prominently featured on Taco Bell’s parent corporation, Yum! Brands Inc., Web site — to protect the rights of animals in their suppliers’ operations.

The site reads: “Yum! Brands is the owner of restaurant companies and, as such, does not own, raise, or transport animals. However, as a major purchaser of food products, we have the opportunity, and responsibility, to influence the way animals are treated. We take that responsibility very seriously, and are working with our suppliers on an ongoing basis to make sure the most humane procedures for caring for and handling animals are in place. As a consequence, we only deal with suppliers who maintain the very highest standards and share our commitment to animal welfare.”

Mr. Benitez says: “We have investigated cases where people have been pistol-whipped, held at gunpoint, beaten and told they would have their tongues cut out if they talked to the authorities. Of course, that’s the extreme of exploitation in the fields, but sweatshop conditions — sub-poverty wages, no right to organize, no right to overtime pay, no health insurance, no benefits at all — are our everyday reality. And yet Taco Bell treats us as if we had nothing whatsoever to do with their industry.

“Taco Bell has a policy that it will not buy food from contractors that mistreat animals,” Mr. Benitez said. “All we are asking is that they have the same policy for humans.”

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