The foods most often connected to human trafficking
Some of the foods in your fridge and pantry right now were likely produced by people in conditions that qualify as labor trafficking. How can you know what foods are most often connected to trafficking? What can you do about it?
First of all, it’s helpful to know what labor trafficking is. The U.S. State Department defines it this way: “The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery. A victim need not be physically transported from one location to another for the crime to fall within this definition.”
This blanket definition includes child labor as one subset. According to the International Labour Organization, “The term ‘child labour’ is often defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.”
Every year, the U.S. Department of Labor releases a report on all of the goods produced with child labor — including consumer goods as well as perishables like food. The extensive list provides a detailed and thorough account organized by country and type of labor exploitation. The most recent expert supply chain analysis by Tufts University provides a more succinct list of foods at the highest risk of being produced with forced labor. Keep reading to find out what they are and learn some steps you can take to shop Fairtrade.
Meat, poultry, and eggs
In recent years, story after story has surfaced of children working dangerous jobs in meat packing and processing. The New York Times published a scathing series of articles, including one that told the story of 14-year-old Marcos — a migrant child from Guatemala who was maimed while working in a Purdue slaughterhouse.
And Marcos is far from the only one. The Department of Labor recently leveled a civil complaint against a Mar-Jac Poultry slaughterhouse in Alabama. The Department of Homeland Security has been investigating poultry plants in the Midwest that employed kids as young as 13.
The meat processed in these shady factories is sold by some of the United States’ biggest retailers: stores like Walmart, Costco, and Whole Foods. Supervisors in these plants are encouraged to turn a blind eye to employees who seem suspiciously young. Kids work shifts overnight, making it less likely that they’ll be noticed by anyone who could report the problem.
The meat industry’s inequity is more than just a processing issue. Trafficking can be traced all the way back to the origin of the supply. Sheep herders in states like Colorado and Utah are paid what is widely considered to be slave wages by ranchers who take advantage of their migrant status.
Fish is included in this category of risk. Vulnerable workers are often trapped on fishing vessels in unregulated international waters, working in life-threatening conditions for little to no pay. As the demand for fish has risen in recent years, so too has the problem of over-fishing, which drives both human trafficking in the fishing industry and devastating impacts on the environment.
Chocolate and cocoa
Chocolate is both an incredibly common household treat and an unfortunately frequent contributor to labor exploitation. As cocoa giants like Hershey’s, Nestle, and Mars have fallen under increasing scrutiny, they have made promises to implement better protections against unjust labor in heavily cocoa-producing countries like Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. However, those promises have been poorly implemented.
According to an investigative piece by the Washington Post, “About two-thirds of the world’s cocoa supply comes from West Africa where, according to a 2015 U.S. Labor Department report, more than 2 million children were engaged in dangerous labor in cocoa-growing regions.”
These children might start working as young as 5 years old. They miss school, and their physical and social development is hampered and stunted by the grueling labor. It’s not just children who are exploited on these plantations. Sometimes, whole families are trapped in exploitive labor arrangements, paid pennies per hour. Very few cocoa farmers make a living wage.
If you want to make sure you’re purchasing chocolate that does not prop up these oppressive systems, you can visit the Chocolate Scorecard for an assessment of different brands’ ethics and transparency. Right now, companies leading the push for more ethical cocoa include Tony’s Chocolonely, Ritter Sport, and HALBA.
Coffee
As with chocolate, much attention has been directed toward coffee’s ethical issues in recent decades. Coffee plantations can be brutal places to work, with laborers in places like Guatemala and Côte d’Ivoire enduring long hours, no workplace protections, and minuscule wages. Stringent guidelines have been developed for qualifying coffee as Fairtrade: “Fairtrade certifies coffee cooperatives whose members are small-scale farmers precisely because they are the heart of coffee production and of their communities.”
However, true change has been slow. When it comes to major brands, even a Fairtrade label might not guarantee a slavery-free supply chain.
“Coffee beans may change hands over 100 times along their supply chain, brands like Nespresso may end up stamping products as ‘ethically made’ when they were in fact picked by modern-day slaves in Colombia, Vietnam, or Uganda,” Human Trafficking Search explains.
However, exploitation doesn’t only occur in the countries that produce the most coffee. Often, labor abuses are rife within the coffee roasting and processing mechanisms in the United States. This is why a model known as direct trade, where a roaster has direct relationships with individuals at every level of the supply chain, is often used as the ethical gold standard for coffee sellers.
Processed fruits and vegetables
According to a detailed supply chain analysis, processed fruits and vegetables are a surprisingly common culprit for labor violations.
According to the analysis, “Processed fruits and vegetables included single-strength and concentrated juices as well as canned, frozen and otherwise preserved products.”
Experts at Tufts University suggest that products that are picked by hand represent particular risk. That list includes avocados, citrus fruits, and pineapples. It’s all too easy for underpaid and underage laborers to be hidden deep in orchards and groves.
As with coffee or chocolate, sometimes even Fairtrade certification is not fully sufficient to guarantee a lack of exploitation in the supply chain. Individual consumers will always be operating with some level of trust that companies are doing what they say. This is why the responsibility for more equitable fruit and vegetable production has to eventually come down to holding corporations accountable for their labor practices.
What can we do about labor trafficking in food supply?
Labor abuses in food supply chains can feel overwhelmingly pervasive. But we are not powerless. Our choices and our advocacy can signal to corporations that we value a more just world.
If you are not sure where to start, choose one product on this list that you already commonly buy and begin stocking your kitchen with its Fairtrade alternative. You will start to make an impact — one grocery shopping trip at a time.
How can we find Fairtrade food?
If you’re ready to uplevel your conscious consumerism, fortunately, many websites and apps exist to help. Here are a few ways to learn more about the Fairtrade status of the products you’re buying.
This database assesses brands in a variety of industries to examine their labor practices and advances in Fairtrade initiatives.
“KnowTheChain believes that benchmarks can play a powerful role in encouraging companies to uphold labour standards and protect workers’ rights, harnessing the competitive nature of markets to drive a ‘race to the top’ by creating brand reward for leaders and brand risk for laggards,” the company explains.
This app has a built-in scanner that allows you to check on product supply chain information in real time. The app even has an advocacy component, informing brands of the decisions shoppers are making about their products. Right now, the app is active in 192 countries globally, providing one of the only crowdsourced databases of its kind.
This app allows users to search based on multiple different categories of concern: nutrition, ingredients, and sustainability. This makes it ideal if you have more than one concern about food products you are considering purchasing.
Although it is not the most streamlined of options, Fairtrade International does have its own online database of Fairtrade license holders. This is particularly helpful if you want to find information at the company level versus looking at individual products.
Advocate for fair labor
Consider searching for the track record of common brands and directly contacting companies, urging them to clean up potential ethical pitfalls in their sources.
You can also find a full list of current U.S. human trafficking legislation from the Human Trafficking Legal Center. Educate yourself on each proposed law and how it might impact vulnerable workers. Contact your local representatives to inform them that, as a constituent, you care about labor trafficking. Talk to your neighbors and community members about what is at stake and why it matters to you.
Finally, if you are a small business owner yourself who is committed to these principles, we invite you to join us in the Free World Business Alliance. Together, we are actively standing against child exploitation and human trafficking in our communities, our supply chains, and our world.
