Museum on Wheels Exposes Modern-Day Slavery in Ag Industry

by Tara Lohan · 2010-03-19 15:12:00 UTC
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tomatoesThe Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the group leading the charge for farm worker rights in Florida's tomato fields, has created a new weapon for public education and advocacy. Slashfood reports that the CIW has transformed a cargo truck into a mobile museum.

I'm guessing that a lot of people aren't aware that slavery in our fields continues to this day. The CIW's truck reportedly outlines the history of slavery in the U.S. and continues right up to the present day. The CIW has been instrumental in working with the Department of Justice to crack seven slavery cases in recent years. Yep, that’s right, even today there are people in this country, picking the food we eat, who are performing forced labor. (This is in addition the myriad workers who are toiling under unsafe labor conditions for obscenely low pay.)

The CIW has been engaged for years in a Campaign for Fair Food, which has been working with leading fast-food chains and tomato suppliers to give workers a voice in the effort to reform labor conditions and increase wages. The CIW has successfully brought on biggies like McDonald's, Burger King, and Yum Brands, the parent company of Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut. A strange hold-out has been Chipotle Grill, which has been called out for the hypocrisy of their "food with integrity" motto.

Sean Sellers, a Food and Society Fellow at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, wrote a great story for Grist that outlines the campaign and its battle to try and bring Chipotle into the mix. One of the key points that Sellers addresses is that, for all the awareness about local products and sustainability in the food movement, there's not much emphasis on the rights of workers who are picking the food we eat. Sellers wrote, "All of which brings us to a question posed by Eric Schlosser at last year's Slow Food Nation conference: 'Does it matter whether an heirloom tomato is local and organic if it was harvested with slave labor?'"

My feeling is that it doesn't.

Photo credit: stevendepolo

Tara Lohan is a senior editor at AlterNet.org where she heads up the environment, water, and food sections. Her work has appeared on the websites of The Nation, Mother Jones, the Huffington Post and in Yes! Magazine.
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