No Recipe Exchange this week, alas, so on a related topic, here’s hopeful news about an initiative to improve food safety by improving conditions for the workers who pick our crops:
MOSS LANDING, Calif. — With piles of fresh strawberries beckoning consumers at markets and stores this season, an alliance of a major retailer, fruit growers and farm workers has begun a program to promote healthy produce and improve working conditions.
The initiative, unfolding along neatly planted rows of berries at the Andrew & Williamson Fresh Produce’s Sierra Farm here, is an effort to prevent the types of bacterial outbreaks of salmonella, listeria or E.coli that have sickened consumers who ate contaminated cantaloupes, spinach or other produce.
One of the workers, Valentin Esteban, is on the front lines of the new effort, having gone through a training program that helps him avoid practices that lead to possible bacterial contamination that could undermine the safety and quality of the strawberries he picks.
In exchange, Andrew & Williamson is providing Mr. Esteban better pay and working conditions than many migrant farmworkers receive, a base pay of $9.05 an hour versus the $8 average in the area.
“Sure, the money is important, but I also feel good because I am helping to improve quality and safety,” Mr. Esteban said. “Those things are important to my family, too.”
Last summer, more than 250 people in 24 states were sickened and three died after eating cantaloupes contaminated with salmonella. A year earlier, cantaloupe tainted with listeria killed 33 people.
The Food and Drug Administration laid the blame on conditions like stagnant pools of water and dirty surfaces in packing areas, problems that farm workers could help prevent.
“In those cases, the workers weren’t trained to address it or even recognize that those conditions might be problematic,” said Peter O’Driscoll, project director of Oxfam America’s Equitable Food Initiative. “Farm workers can be the eyes and ears of the farm, helping to improve food safety and pest contamination.” …
The tough part — as you cynics are sure to point out — is getting consumers to pay an extra few cents for their strawberries. The existence of a Starbucks outlet on every other corner convinces me this can be done, with the proper sales techniques. And for the pious purists on the other side of the aisle, yes, it’s a terrible thing that so many Americans can’t afford strawberries at all, but I still think paying the pickers something closer to a living wage is an improvement.
Baud
I can’t believe there are two sides of the aisle on the issue of strawberries.
The Dangerman
Can’t we give the Strawberry Field owners a tax cut instead? Or did I see too much Romney on the TV today?
MonkeyBoy
Aren’t all these food diseases fecal born?
I thought that the major causes for them were that the workers were penalized for taking proper toilet breaks and hand washing, so they just poop in the fields.
dmsilev
@The Dangerman:
Any Romney is too much Romney. Though it is nice to see that his loss is chewing away at what passes for his soul.
Mike in NC
Darrell Issa needs to investigate this.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
Because the farmers don’t give a shit (no pun intended) about having a migrant workforce trained in proper handling of fresh produce.
I’m glad it’s happening, but there’s a lot of worker blame going on in those few paragraphs.
Yatsuno
S’ok, it just makes me more motivated to get my recipe over to BHF that I’ve been teasing her weeks about.
Mnemosyne
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
I’m not entirely sure if it’s worker blame or carefully-worded supervisor blame — after all, if the workers don’t know that it’s dangerous, it’s not their fault, it’s the supervisor’s and/or owner’s fault.
TaMara (BHF)
@Yatsuno: This.
And sorry everyone. The week just got away from me. When it came down to writing the post this afternoon and going out in the sun for a 2 hour ride, I chose the ride. I know, I know. But you can always hop over to the blog and drool over JeffreyW’s photos.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@Mnemosyne: I see what you’re saying, but really “eyes and ears of the farm”? WTF have they been for the last umpteen years they’ve been using migrants to pick crops? deaf, dumb and mute?
It’s 2013. I realize they want to walk a fine line by not insulting the owners, but standing water and unsafe handling conditions are the owner’s responsibility to correct, just like an unsafe building in Bangladesh.
ETA: just so we’re clear, I agree with your overall sentiment, but would have liked to have seen more emphasis on the owner side of the equation in the quoted excerpt.
jayackroyd
I don’t think that’s true for an instant. The tough part is getting labeling that accurately reports how crops are produced. If GMOs were labeled accurately people wouldn’t buy them. If there was a 5 percent premium for a living wage, that’d be fine. You can infer this from how hard the food industry fights accurate labeling.
Smith’s invisible hand only works when this kind of informational asymmetry is regulated away. You can’t have market competition without regulatory authorities making sure people are paying for what they are getting.
schrodinger's cat
I has two recipes on my blog, one chicken and one shrimp. They are quite simple, actually but they do use a lot of spices.
Yatsuno
@schrodinger’s cat: NOMZ!!!
Linnaeus
Frankly, most of us need to pay a little more for a lot of things.
WereBear
Strawberries that DON’T kill ya; worth a few cents more.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Owners are the ones setting up working conditions making these guys shit in the fields, leave boxes of strawberries in puddles and load produce without even trying to wash it.
This isn’t a “solution”, this is shitty, vicious PR dumping blame on the workers for a problem not of their making.
Yatsuno
@WereBear: Pfft. The Invisible Hand of the Free Market will sort it out. After all, if you don’t want fatal strawberries, just pay for them.
Mnemosyne
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
The migrants have been powerless and afraid to speak up, is the implication (at least to me). Maybe it’s because I’ve been steeped in corporatespeak for quite a while now, but it’s pretty boilerplate Total Quality Management stuff. Interesting that it took so long for it to get down to the farmworker level.
trollhattan
And then there’s the stuff sourced from overseas, only we don’t know that on purchase.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865581366/Costco-offering-reimbursement-for-hepatitis-A-vaccinations-after-recall.html
I don’t know what the answer might be, but accurate, complete labeling would sure be nice.
Arclite
But, but, but… FREEDUM!
AHH onna Droid
@jayackroyd: Really? Id buy them. My issue with gmos is that theyre roundup ready instead of pest resistant, everything to enrich the chemical cos,fuck farmers and fuck thr environment. I eat gmo corn daily, direct or indirect bc I live in the us, tastes the same as that euro hippy pure corn.
Tired of fraidy cat purity fanatics who not only dont know but emphatically reject science speaking for me.
AHH onna Droid
Mnemosyne: So, it took people dying from tainted spinach and spinach sales kathunking to do anything.
Ps: e coli deadly strain comes from grain fed cattle, not human poo. Human poo spreads.that gastroenteritis shit where u spew out both ends for 24 hrs, also cholera.
e.a.f.
the problem maybe that no one cared. consumers fequently do not know where their food comes, how its grown, and harvested. They don’t care, they just want the most inexpensive product. That is until they become very ill, rack up medical bills, or die.
Farm owners, just want to make a profit and many are large corporations. A few small farms do care, they eat the product.
Farm workers may not care because they aren’t paid to care. They can barely care about themselves and their families.
Rules and regulations need to be enforced. the government didn’t write these rules just for fun. They were written to ensure a safe product for consumers. Food inspectors ought to be able to enforce the regulations.
Paying workers a decent salary is important. They will actually care about where they work and the conditions. Education for worker, farm owner, and consumer is paramount.
Some of the infections come from bacteria which is the result of dirty water used to water the fields, some of it is bacteria from pickers and sorters not have adequate bathroom and washing facilities. Some of the bacteria comes from dirty machines and standing pools of water. It all adds up to disease. If America is to consider itself a “first World” country they ought to try operating as one.
It is best to wash all fruit and veggies prior to eating. Just like you should wash your hands before eating.
It is good to see some employers are paying their workers better wages. Consumers can not expect to have low food prices by exploiting the field workers. There usually is some sort of blow back. In some cases its disease
gelfling545
The tough part — as you cynics are sure to point out — is getting consumers to pay an extra few cents for their strawberries.
My observation has been that people will pay what they have to to get what they want up to, and maybe a little past the point where it becomes ridiculous. The real problem here is that if there are a few more pennies to be had from consumers for strawberries, fast food, whatever, the corporations would prefer it go to their profits, not to wages.
lojasmo
@gelfling545:
Uh, yeah. I just pay at the counter for what I’ve chosen.
low-tech cyclist
What I’ve heard is that even with fairly labor-intensive produce like strawberries, labor is maybe 10% of the cost of the food. So only about 50¢ of that $5 container of strawberries goes to pay for the farmworkers. If they get paid $9 instead of $8/hr, that increases their pay by 12.5%, or an additional 6¢ per $5 container.
Oh noes! How would we ever
affordnotice that price hike?!mclaren
We should also be talking about the fact that the sequester is forcing the FDA to cut back so much on meat inspectors that we’re heading back to the bad old Upton Sinclair days:
Kevin
@Mnemosyne:
I am taken back about some of the comments about farm workers and their voice in the production of our food. The EFI is all about strengthening the worker voice in how food is planted, nurtured(yes sometimes with dangerous chemicals) picked and packed for the consumer. Agriculture in general is still treading water in the early 1900’s when it comes to recognizing the skill and intelligence of farm workers and implementing training and production processes that are humane and healthy. We can all look back and ask “why” has this taken so long? Instead we are looking forward and working with farm workers, unions, NGO’s, growers and retailers to ensure we are not asking the same question 10 years from now. Blame of anyone will not change peoples lives. Confidence change peoples lives…that is what EFI is all about “building confidence from the field to the table”