[hupso title=”The @FairFoodProgram Label is here! RT to join the#FairFoodNation & @FoodChainsFilm movement” url=”https://ciw-online.org/blog/2014/10/the-label/”]

CIW releases long-awaited Fair Food Label!

After four seasons of careful implementation of its unique model of worker-driven social responsibility, including the last three seasons across more than 90% of Florida’s $650 million tomato industry, the CIW is unveiling today the first-ever Fair Food Program label (above).  Its release truly marks a major milestone in the two-decade long journey that farmworkers and consumers have traveled together to bring justice to Florida’s fields (and beyond!).

And there is no day more appropriate than Food Day – when people across the country stop to reflect on the future of our food system – to launch an image representing the historic remaking of the Florida tomato industry achieved by farmworkers through the Fair Food Program.  

So today we want to invite every ally across the country who has ever walked on a picket line for Fair Food, delivered a manager letter to a local grocery store or restaurant, or marched a mile (or 230!) with workers from Immokalee, to join us in celebrating this watershed moment and spreading the word of this gorgeous new consumer label!

Here below is an excerpt from today’s press release announcing the release of the new label:

Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program reaches milestone with release of official Fair Food Label

October 24, 2014 – The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has officially released a Fair Food label to help shoppers identify which tomatoes come from ethical farms.

The label will be available to all grocery stores and restaurants that participate in the Fair Food Program. Participants in the Program pay a small premium when they buy Florida tomatoes, with the premium going to increase wages for farmworkers. They also commit to a worker-created Code of Conduct to ensure safe working conditions and prevent forced labor, sexual harassment and child labor in the fields. The Fair Food Program has been called “the best workplace monitoring program in the US,” in the New York Times and “one of the great human rights success stories of our day,” in the Washington Post.

“We have waited nearly five years before revealing this label to the world today,” said Cruz Salucio of the CIW.  “Over those years, we have been doing the hard, day-by-day work of building the Fair Food Program in Florida’s fields — educating workers about their rights, investigating complaints, and identifying and eliminating bad actors and bad practices — so that today we can stand behind the fair conditions and effective monitoring process that this label represents,” continued Salucio.  “We couldn’t be more proud of this label. It symbolizes the new day for workers in agriculture that we, as farmworkers and in partnership with consumers across the country, have fought so hard to make real.”… read more

Here’s how you can help us spread the news!  Click here for a shareable Twitter image (above), and make sure to check out our post on how to join CIW and the expert team from the documentary “Food Chains” today on social media for the nationwide conversation about the new label.  

You fought hard to help get us this far, let’s keep working together to take the Fair Food Program to the next level!