“Fair Trade” Labels Conceal Brutal Abuses of Farmworkers
Many grocery products from Mexico are sold in the US with labels touting their fair labor practices — but the farmworkers who produce that food say they are subject to brutal exploitation and widespread abuse by their employers.
A day laborer harvests chives at a field in the Mexicali Valley, Baja California state, Mexico alongside the Mexico-US border, on August 10, 2017. (Guillermo Arias / AFP via Getty Images)
Any US consumer walking down the supermarket aisle will find berries, tomatoes, and other vegetables that are labeled “responsibly grown,” “farmworker-assured,” and “fair-trade certified.”
But behind the labels, the Mexican workers who harvest these fruits and vegetables live and labor in conditions they call “twenty-first century slavery.”
We interviewed two hundred workers for our new report “Certified Exploitation: How Equitable Food Initiative and Fair Trade USA Fail to Protect Farmworkers in the Mexican Produce Industry.” They detailed widespread wage theft, sexual harassment, rampant retaliation, and, in the most extreme cases, forced labor.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.