Connections: Hypocrites’ Harvest

Remember the grape boycotts of the 20th century? The dramatic slogan “It Won’t Wash” helped convince many of us to give up table grapes in support of California farm workers and their families, who were suffering serious health consequences, including birth defects and various cancers, from the pesticides being sprayed on fruit.

Pesticides are still used on fruits and vegetables in this country, of course, although one hopes that the Food and Drug Administration, and perhaps state law, have done away with the worst. Many of those who joined in the United Farm Workers boycott then have moved on now to organic foods and the slow food movement. 

For many years I didn’t buy grapes unless they were labeled as organic, and they weren’t always easy to find. I developed an admittedly unscientific rule of thumb about avoiding fruits from other countries, taking it on faith that those grown here were more strictly regulated and therefore safer than those grown in other countries. 

It is easy to get exorcised about pesticide use in this country and, yes, about industrial meat and poultry practices, especially if you spend any time reading friends’ Facebook posts and links. But what got me thinking again about grapes was the plastic pouch of green grapes grown in Chile that my husband brought home recently. So the next few times I went food shopping, I took some time to see where our produce was coming from on a winter’s day. The blueberries for sale came from Chile, too, and raspberries, blackberries, and grape tomatoes were from Mexico. 

International sources are common, these days, in the seafood aisle, too. I was surprised to see tuna from Indonesia along with frozen shrimp from Vietnam as well as Indonesia; tilapia, according to labels, was farm-raised in Ecuador or perhaps China. Bay scallops and shrimp from China are inexpensive, and even local shops carry them now — though, I have to admit, I don’t find the idea of a Chinese-managed aquaculture operation very appetizing, knowing what we know about that country’s industrial-oversight practices. Wired, Mother Jones, Bloomberg Businessweek, and others have reported on the dicy and/or disgusting things that get dumped into tilapia and shrimp pens in China (hog manure, for example, and nitrofurans, a cancer-causing chemical that has been banned for aquaculture use in the United States, and the list of grossness goes on). 

It wasn’t so long ago that local markets eschewed fish “from away,” even red snapper, which often comes from Southern waters. Our bays and offshore waters provide a variety of indigenous and migrating species, perhaps more so than any other waters on the East Coast. But this no longer seems to be enough for the demanding Hamptons consumer. Despite the fact that it has become so fashionable to do lip-serving to “eating local,” a rainbow array of seafood, from Mediterranean branzino to New Zealand cockles, are bought here and consumed here on any given day.   

All this makes me wonder if we Americans have become too complacent about working conditions in other parts of the world. How many young people have even heard of the U.F.W. boycotts, or of Cesar Chavez, who was once a real American folk hero? Does our money aid and abet the exploitation of workers — the disregard for workers’ health — in countries poorer than ours? 

And what about our foods’ “carbon footprint,” to use another tritely fashionable phrase?

According to a recent Voice of America story, the operators of seven fishing vessels based in South Africa were found to have enslaved Indonesian fishermen, trapping them with false promises of a good living. Thailand and Cambodia are also listed on Internet sources as egregiously violating the rights of fishermen. 

Something is very wrong with a global community in which some of us are positioned to indulge in every possible culinary fancy — fruits and fish that once were exotic — while ignoring anything unpleasant about how these things were raised and harvested. It ought not take news of enslaved fishermen or publicity about birth defects in farm workers’ children to encourage us to be more genuinely thoughtful when making choices at the grocery store.