Category Archives: Anthropocene

Chocolate and Trafficking: Producing Anxieties over the Chocolate Industry

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Whether it crunches, snaps, or melts– chocolate varieties have much of the same impact on global populations that harvest it. Human trafficking and child labour pervade the chocolate industry, with U.S. Department of Labour estimates citing over 2 million child labourers engaged in the dangerous task of harvesting cocoa beans. 

For me, hearing this is nothing new.

In 2015, I first engaged with a non-profit called Dressember-– a non-profit that seeks to eradicate human trafficking by calling attention to unethical fashion production. Dressember also raises awareness for other unethical industries. They even promote ethical alternatives to chocolate, coffee, and clothing brands. 

Infographic via dressember.org 

Despite knowing this, going into this contemplative practice was still even more difficult to process as I watched farmworkers taste for the first time the product that they didn’t even know was being produced from their labour. This produced a certain anxiety that I recognized immediately– if farmers don’t know where their product is going, and if populations largely don’t understand where it is coming from, how can we generate awareness for labour injustices like these? How can we promote more transparency in the supply chain to ensure human rights protections? These are things I wonder as I sit behind my screen, with the privilege of simply contemplating, allowing myself to entertain ideas of socially just practices. But how is this put into action?

Among increasingly conflicting ideas about globalization and “fair trade”, I found it hard to connect myself to an immediate solution during this exercise. The contemplative practice connected me to the true complexity of the issue. Damaging and unsustainable practices give me insight into the ecological blindness that companies operate with, but with child labour, this opens us to the ethical blindness that companies operate with, viewing human bodies and children as dispensable lives.

North Carolina’s Hog Industry Is A Telling Example of Crumbling Tort Law in America

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After colonial-era tobacco fields gradually fell out of fashion, North Carolina established a rich history of hog farming. What seemed an economic lifeboat has posed serious environmental and health hazards to the people most intertwined in the process. North Carolina produces 10 billion gallons of wet livestock waste annually, most of which resides in uncovered waste lagoons that are prone to flooding during hurricanes- an issue that will only become more prevalent as climate change worsens. To prevent natural overflow, most of the fecal water is used to fertilize crops, which introduces issues of nitrogen concentration groundwater and river runoff.

A rust-colored hog waste basin looks far from any ponds we know. Credit DEFMO via WUNC (Magnus & Stasio, “A Big Look at Big Hog in North Carolina”)

Most of these ponds exist in majority black and latinx communities who, historically, have been disenfranchised through sharecropping, and rarely benefit from the wealth that is generated by multigenerational contract hog farmers. Rather, an experience of lifelong asthma and shortened life spans is steadily present. Community members in Bladen County recently sued Smithfield farms for violating the right to “private use and enjoyment of land” through negligent waste-management practices, and won. Members lamented the lack of mobility, feeling trapped in their houses, as trips outside swiftly caused nausea and headaches- a disadvantage many of us are only recently experiencing. Millions were awarded to plaintiffs, but restrictions on nuisance suits relating to hog operations quickly followed. 

 

The state has a history of restricting suits and issuing moratoriums in relation to swine litigation, as public officials receive sizable campaign donations from contracting companies who control the market, enacting a tort law that, little-by-little, chips away individual capacity to address industry malfeasance- a national pattern in tort law that was exponentially embraced after the famous Liebeck v. McDonald’s hot coffee case. Another product of the litigation required individual farms to significantly reduce odor in ten days, through the installation of pond covers and methane energy converters at their own expense- a demand that farmers under Smithfield felt impossible. With many farmers soon in violation of court demands and breach of Smithfield contract, they saw their pigs carted off and livelihoods destroyed. 

Source: Yeoman, Barry. (2019, Dec 20). Here are the rural residents who sued the world’s largest hog producer over waste and odors— and won. Retrieved from The Fern.

The Right to Privacy, Free Speech, and a Humane Life

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The family farm. Rolling green pastures, a red barn, and calves running around with their moms before stopping to suckle. This is where Americans picture their food comes from. What they don’t realize, however, is how many carefully crafted laws there are to keep farming and ranching out of the public eye and away from accusation. I recently went to a family dairy farm. The reality was they owned 3,000 dairy cows, the males sold to an industrial beef farm, the mothers spent 4-5 years standing on wood, sand, and manure before being sold for to an industrial slaughterhouse, and the calves were separated from their mothers the day they’re born.

The news about what is happening and how misleading this industry is gets exemplified through Ag-gag laws. Ag-gag laws are laws that essentially prohbit any recording of what happens on these farms and in slaughterhouses. As per the persecutor’s discretion, filming what happens, even if the footage displays illegal treatment of the animals, can have you tried for terrorism. Many states have begun overturning these ag-gag laws as being unconstitutional due to the first amendment’s freedom of speech as well as offering protection for when abuse is discovered.

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Yet this year, an article came out on Food and Environment Reporting Network stating that it is now illegal to take drone footage of feedlots in Texas. You are allowed to charter a plane to film, but that is an incredibly expensive venture compared to a drone. The industry argues it is to protect themselves and their private properties. The reporters argue it is still a violation of the first amendment and keeps the public blind to the conditions the animals live in so they don’t have the opportunity to make educated choices when shopping.

What do you think? After reading personal and professional perspectives, do you believe these laws are just? Or do you believe they are in violation of the first amendment and prevent consumers from learning exactly where their food is coming from? Are they there for the small family farmers? Or the industrial agriculturalists who dominate the American meat and dairy market?

Personally, I believe this is just one of the real costs of cheap food.

Food Supply Chain “Strong” But Questions Remain

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Washington State Governor Jay Inslee declared a statewide shutdown of restaurants and other public spaces back on March 15th, assuring Washingtonians that the supply chain was strong, hoping to alleviate fears and hoarding by consumers. And while grocery stores have remained open, albeit with sparsely stocked hand soap and toilet paper shelves, an NPR article released a few days later raised questions about the trying times about to strike those in a different—yet equally vital—part of the supply chain: agricultural workers.

Workers in Wapato, WA. Photo Credit: Elaine Thompson/AP

The good news is that most seasonal workers coming from Mexico will still qualify for their H-2A visas. The bad news is that these people will be traveling far and wide, often living in close proximity to one another once they reach their employer’s fields, meaning exposure to COVID-19 is a strong possibility. While distributors and farmers deal with the logistical and financial strain of re-routing products from shuttered restaurants, the last thing they need is a labor shortage.

So what can be done? Greater government involvement in clean and safe housing for workers? Incentives for workers exposing themselves in travelling long distances across borders and state lines, like short-term medical benefits, or insurance, for seasonal workers, to protect them if they fall ill? And what of farms that will be closing from decline in business?

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. COVID-19 has put our healthcare system in crisis. No matter your politics, it is clear our systems simply aren’t geared for dealing with a calamity. In the age of the Anthropocene it hardly seems this current health crisis will be the end of hard-times. If we don’t prepare now, addressing weaknesses in our systems, the next crisis we face could mean not just soap and paper products disappear from store shelves.