What It's Like Picking Fruit

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi ... picks=true

Gives me something to think about the next time I drive my air conditioned car to the air conditioned grocery to buy some fruit.

When I read that I was reminded of a time Anne I were working on a farm in Washington state. In the neighboring farm they were growing strawberrys. The thing that stuck with me was the way these folks would be coated with pesticide. A tractor pulling a spray boom would come along spraying the plants and the people would just pull their shirt up over their face as the tractor came by and sprayed over top of them. In addition to being totally illegal to spray your workers, we wondered how much ,if any of this chemical was washed off before being flash frozen and packed in bags for the supermarket freezer.
I could go on and on about the mistreatment that occurs with the use of migrant farm hands..but I wont Woody Guthrie already did. It just sucks that in this day, in this country we treat fellow humans so poorly to save mere pennies.

..."totally illegal to spray your workers"...

Whoa !! Dude !!...Now THAT is bad. So what kind of action did ya'll end up taking as a result of this anyway ?

So what kind of action did ya'll end up taking as a result of this anyway ?

As I read your question it occurred to me "why didnt I call the cops that second?" then I realized that was before cell phones. Anyway, we reported the farm to a workers rights group outside of Olympia. I know little if any action was taken as this was not an isolated incident. We witnessed this this numerous times.
There are a lot of factors at work here.
Most of these folks really really need the money(be it meager as it is)
You are not very likely to go to the cops/officials when you are illegal yourself
Many of these workers were uneducated about the dangers of farm chemicals
Its better to put up with this crap than feed my kid a mud cake for a meal in my Honduran shanty town (see first in list)
but..like I said earlier Woody says it better than I do.

Thanks for posting, Justin. Everyone should read this.

Deb