Treatment of Farm Workers a Crime

As you enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables have you ever wondered what it took to get that produce to your table? I will confess that I have not been able to eat a grape ever since Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America, described the horrible working conditions of the workers.

Did you know, for example, that a farm workers' average life expectancy is 49 years --compared to 73 years for the average American?

Now, workers are fighting back. The Associate Press reports:

Workers say pesticides made them sterile

The pesticide was designed to kill worms infesting the roots of banana trees on Latin American plantations. But at least 5,000 agricultural workers from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama have filed five lawsuits in this country claiming they were left sterile after being exposed in the 1970s to the pesticide known as DBCP.

It's not uncommon for pesticides to be sprayed while the farm workers are in the fields! It's no wonder they are experiencing health problems. Not only were the workers exposed to the spraying, but the chemicals seeped into the water supply.

Plantation workers were allowed to ingest and bathe in contaminated water when they lived in company-supplied housing on Nicaraguan banana plantations, the lawsuit said.

Use of DBCP was phased out in the US by 1979, but the product continued to be sold outside of the United States.

The upcoming lawsuit was filed in 2004 and accuses Dole Fresh Fruit Co. and Standard Fruit Co., now a part of Dole, of negligence and fraudulent concealment while using the pesticide.

Dow Chemical Co. and Amvac Chemical Corp., manufacturers of the pesticide, "actively suppressed information about DBCP's reproductive toxicity," according to the lawsuit.

It seems the only way to get multinational companies to do the right thing is to make it too costly for them not to. Let's hope the jury feels the same.