Why Slave Labor Still Plagues The Global Food System
When the State Department released its annual report on human trafficking Wednesday, we got a chilling reminder that even in 2013, slave labor is still embedded in the global food system.
As many as 27 million men, women and children are estimated to be trafficking victims at any given time, according to the report. And some of those victims, the State Department says, are later forced to work in agriculture and food processing (though no one has a good idea how many).
The agriculture sector has an ugly track record when it comes to labor abuses, of course. Sugar production fueled the slave trade that brought millions of Africans to the Americas. As the Polaris Project, an anti-slavery organization, notes, agricultural work today is often isolated and transient, with peaks and lulls in employment due to changing harvest seasons. These conditions leave workers vulnerable, creating opportunities that farmers and food factory owners continue to exploit.
The new State Department report has many references to farm work: Malian children transported to Ivory Coast for forced labor on cocoa farms, and ethnic Indian families forced to work in the Bangladesh tea industry, to name a couple. Some of these offending farms and factories serve only the local economy. But some are selling food products on the international market.
As NPR's Michele Kelemen reports, the State Department hopes that this year's report will hit home with Americans. And so an official reminds us that as consumers, we are at one end of a food supply chain that sometimes leads back to slavery.
Luis CdeBaca, the official in charge of the office that monitors and fights trafficking, told Michele:
"This year's report looks at things like the fishing industry — and actually raises a question that I think all of us should be asking, which is: How much of my life is impacting modern-day slavery? Do I know where the shrimp is being caught or processed that is on my plate?"