Perhaps 80 percent of the migrants in Florida are illegal immigrants and thus especially vulnerable to abuse. During the past decade, the United States Justice Department has prosecuted half a dozen cases of slavery among farm workers in Florida. Migrants have been driven into debt, forced to work for nothing and kept in chained trailers at night.

Farm workers earn approximately $56/day for handling about two tons of tomatoes; wages are calculated based on piece rates rather than hours worked. Existing agreements with Taco Bell and McDonald’s have improved some migrant worker wages to as much as $90+ a day. (That averages out to a little over $8/hour for hard physical labor, an amount I consider horrifically low.) The penny-a-pound increase went directly to migrant workers. However, Burger King’s refusal to play is undermining these hard-earned improvements; according to Schlosser, these workers now face a 40% pay cut as tomato growers “cancel the deals already struck with Taco Bell and McDonald’s.”

What about buyers who want to voluntarily pay extra to make sure that the workers who harvest their food can themselves afford to eat?

Now the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange has threatened a fine of $100,000 for any grower who accepts an extra penny per pound for migrant wages. The organization claims that such a surcharge would violate “federal and state laws related to antitrust, labor and racketeering.”

What can I say? Wow.

Clearly, there are competing accounts of what is at stake; in fact, it was the lack of information online about the nature of the issues that piqued my interest in the first place. I’d still like to see more detailed information about the precise grievances of the workers be available because it really does matter to me that my comfort and conveniences not be tied to someone else’s suffering.

Wilson said that Beef NW is not aware of specific grievances from workers and reported that, contrary to UFW claims, Beef NW provides break rooms, toilets, and water–including bottled water–for their workers. Additionally, he denied that the company had attempted to influence workers during the negotiations process. Hearing his perspective on the lack of dialog with the union, I asked whether they had proposed that a neutral third party become involved in the negotiations in order to facilitate clearer communication; according to Wilson, Beef NW proposed exactly such a step, which was opposed by the UFW and led to the breaking off of negotiations.

Approximately 70% of Beef NW’s employees are Latino; I doubt that many of them have their own blogs, and if I had to extrapolate from my own experience with Oregon’s Latino farmworker population, I’d guess that a significant number of them haven’t had the educational advantages I take for granted. That’s to say, their PR position, compared to that of Beef NW, is tenuous. I’m really glad to see Beef NW’s willingness to engage with the questions I’ve raised.* I’m also aware that simply being able to get a message out has a lot of power in shaping the discourse around an issue.

Overall, I have two observations to make: one is that legislation is definitely needed to provide guidelines for labor relations in the agricultural sector. Such legislation would provide a clear path for employers, especially family businesses with no experience with unions, to follow, and might clarify processes for workers deciding on whether they needed union representation.

The second is that being an informed consumer is so difficult as to be nearly impossible. If one tiny part of my diet, beef that I purchase no more than once a month, has so much information attached to it, how can I even begin to know the stories behind all the other food?

Discuss.

*Tangentially, I’m also really glad to see that some sloppy descriptions of the cattles’ diets on distributors’ sites have been corrected. For the record, neither Beef NW nor Oregon Country Beef made claims about their beef being entirely grass-fed; those claims were elsewhere.

Oregon Country Natural Beef is a cooperative of cattle farms that raise grass-fed beef. However, all the cattle these local farms raise goes through the Beef Northwest feedlot in Boardman for final processing. The cattle spend an average of 89 days there before they are slaughtered and distributed. Employees work in conditions of extreme heat and cold with no shelter for rest, lack ready access to water, breathe in dust and fecal matter from the cattle, and report being forced to continue working even when injured.

Injuries are not uncommon in these settings, but workers are eligible for only three days of paid sick leave per year. Beef Northwest’s employee protections are minimal when compared to those of unionized farms; Threemile Canyon Farms, another Boardman farm, signed a collective bargaining agreement with United Farm Workers earlier this summer. This agreement improved farm worker benefits and protections and helped make the lives of the people who produce our food better. Len Bergstein, a spokesperson for Threemile Canyon Farms, described the change as working very well for the company, adding that it is in everybody’s interests for Oregon to develop clear state guidelines governing how employees go about deciding on union representation.

Such guidelines could help the current situation with Beef Northwest. Beef Northwest employees have so far been unsuccessful in their negotiations for representation with United Farm Workers. Beef Northwest, while claiming neutrality, has, according to employees, engaged in anti-union tactics. Negotiations broke down in mid-August, and workers were unable to enlist the support of Whole Foods and Oregon Country Natural Beef, both of whom are in a great place to use their influence on the workers’ behalf.

What about New Seasons, our favorite grocery store? Claudia Knotek of New Seasons Market described their current position on this matter as one of respect for both sides; “We hope that the differences will be resolved,” she said. Additional comments from Brian Rohter, New Seasons CEO, are pending.

For consumers who care more about their beef than the people who grew it, there’s more. During the three-month holding time at Beef Northwest, the grass-fed cattle switch to a diet of cooked potatoes, corn, and alfalfa [see Oregon Country Natural Beef's site here and here]. From OCNB’s website:

Cooked waste potatoes from nearby food processing plants which would probably go into a landfill without a ruminant to eat them make up over half the ration for the 89 day average stay in the lot.

Information from workers suggests that cows are also being fed used vegetable oil from a processing plant, which raises the possibility that these cattle essentially survive on the equivalent of French fries for the last few months of their bovine lives.

This is not the diet that comes to mind when beef is described as “grass fed.”

I support local and family business for a number of reasons: I think it makes better economic and environmental sense for our communities, and I hope that it supports my values related to worker rights and to corporate transparency. I also value being informed as a consumer. In convoluted situations such as these, there are key players who should be using their influence to make things right, and Oregon Country Natural Beef is one of them; Whole Foods is another. I support workers rights and would like to see these businesses (and others) take the opportunity to rally behind the people who do the hardest physical work to get our food to us, for the fewest benefits, and support them in their just requests.