My quest for an unprocessed, sugar-free, pesticide-free, only-eating-dairy-and-eggs-from-happy-cows-and-chickens-respectively lifestyle continues. I've slipped up a bit lately. The hurricane was a good excuse. I found a good organic supermarket near my house which has a selection of everything beyond my wildest dreams. I can get pasture raised butter and cheese there so I don't have to support the suffering associated with the dairy industry.
What's been on my mind lately is not the suffering of animals. I sort of knew this was happening because I remember, years ago, seeing people protesting outside Taco Bell with signs saying that Taco Bell got its tomatoes through slave labor. So, recently there was a story in NPR about slavery that is going on right now in the tomato growing industry in Florida, U.S.A. Yep, read the story. Actual slavery. People are held against their will, forced to work for basically nothing, beaten or killed if they try to escape. And, as a matter of course, they are exposed to massive amounts of toxic pesticides.
There is a great organization called the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) who is waging an anti-slavery campaign against the tomato growers and those stores and restaurant/fast food chains that profit by selling tomatoes (so, CIW was almost definitely behind those protests at Taco Bell). Through a lot of grassroots organizing, protesting, boycotting and letter writing, CIW has gotten Taco Bell, MacDonalds, Burger King, Whole Foods, Subway, Bon Appétit Co., Compass Group, Aramark and Sodexo to sign an agreement with CIW to improve wages and working conditions for farmworkers, and work with CIW to make sure that tomato growers are held accountable for human rights abuses against their farm workers. See their website for more detailed information.
In addition, through the CIW, there have been 7 indictments (all involving prison sentences) against different tomato growers in Florida for charges of slavery. That blows my mind. What is so staggering is that this is just one industry. I once saw a documentary examining what sounded to be a similar situation with peach growers in Georgia. How many other areas of agriculture in the United States of America use slave labor?
So, what can we do? We can go to CIW's website and send letters to the Supermarket chains who have not signed agreements with CIW (which include Trader Joe's, Giant, Kroger and others). If you shop at these supermarkets, even if you don't buy tomatoes, you're indicating with your dollars and cents that you are cool with shopping at a store that profits from slavery. I usually do half my shopping at the fancy expensive stores (for the organic schmorganic stuff) and half at Giant (so I don't break the bank for my weekly groceries). I'm not shopping at Giant until they agree to work with the CIW.
What else can we do? Write to the companies that make the tomato sauce, salsa, ketchup and whatever other tomato-based products you use and ask them where they get their tomatoes and where they stand on the CIW's Campaign for Fair Food. I wrote to Green Mountain Gringo (maker of the salsa my husband likes to eat).
What else can we do? Donate money to CIW.
What else? Buy local.
O.K. That's it for me. I'm just so demoralized about this.
