“If we could get growers to comply with the law, that would revolutionize agriculture in this country,” said United Farm Workers (UFW) national vice president Erik Nicholson explaining the circumstances that led to the creation of the Equitable Food Initiative.
Environmental Health
A food safety inspector’s warning about chemicals and bacteria under USDA’s proposed poultry inspection “modernization”
After nearly three decades as a USDA food safety inspector, Stan Painter tells me he now feels like “window dressing standing at the end of the line as product whizzes by.”
Now that the Presidential election is over, it’s time for the Labor Department to kick into high gear expand workers’ rights and ensuring workers’ lives and health are protected. Here’s my wish list of tasks for the Labor Department to accomplish in the next 6 months:
Food Safety & Nutrition
The Hands that Feed Us: Most food industry workers earn low or poverty-level wages
A Food Chain Worker Alliance survey of food industry workers — including agricultural and farmworkers, food processing and slaughterhouse employees, and those working in food distribution and retail — found that 86% earned low or poverty wages.
Injury Control & Violence
Government transparency groups ask Labor Dept to restore info scrubbed from website
Open government groups, like the Sunlight Foundation, wrote to Labor Department officials asking them to re-post on its website documents related to a recently withdrawn proposed regulation on child labor.
Regulation
Disappointment and outrage: Advocates react to withdrawal of safety rules for child farmworkers
Advocates react to the Obama administration’s unexpected decision to drop proposed revisions to rules on children working in agriculture — an industry with a high fatality rate for young workers.
Worker Health & Safety
The Pander Games: Obama Administration Sells Out Kids Doing Dangerous Agricultural Work, Breaks Pledge to Ensure Welfare of Youngest Workers
By Rena Steinzor, cross-posted from CPRBlog Yesterday evening, when press coverage had ebbed for the day, the Department of Labor issued a short, four-paragraph press release announcing it was withdrawing a rule on child labor on farms. The withdrawal came after energetic attacks by the American Farm Bureau, Republicans in Congress, Sarah Palin, and–shockingly–Al Franken […]
Agricultural exceptionalism is a term used to describe the special status awarded to employers and firms involved in agriculture. Proponents argue that the special status is necessary because (1) agricultural products contribute to broad national goals (e.g., providing safe and affordable food, preventing hunger); and (2) farming is inherently risky because of the uncertainty of […]
Education
Young farm workers at greater risk of dying on-the-job, proposal to protect them called “detrimental,” “foolish” and “idiotic”
For U.S. workers, the risk of dying on the job is highest if you are employed in agricultural, fishing or hunting. These jobs are not just a little riskier than the average job, they are nearly 8 times more life-threatening. The fatality rate for all private sector workers is 3.5 per 100,000 workers; in agriculture, […]
The Economist recently published a special report on water, which summarizes the difficulty of ensuring adequate clean water supplies for a growing global population. (It also touches on the related challenge of sanitation, which affects water quality.) Agriculture accounts for nearly 70% of the world’s water use, although that number varies by region. In the […]