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Article

13 Jul 2008

Author:
[column] Bill Maxwell, St. Petersburg Times [USA]

Eating that tomato can put you in moral peril [USA]

When…we turn our backs on the cruel treatment of farmworkers, we are complicit in inhumanity... In 2007, farm labor contractor Ronald Evans, his wife Jequita Evans and their son Ron Evans Jr. were sentenced to federal prison for enslaving farm workers and for other labor-related crimes in Florida and North Carolina... Ronald Evans recruited homeless U.S. citizens from shelters...with promises of decent jobs and housing. After the farmworkers arrived at the labor camps…Ronald Evans deducted the price of rent, food, crack cocaine and alcohol from the workers' pay, keeping the workers "perpetually indebted"... The Evans family worked for grower Frank Johns, then-chairman of the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association, the powerful lobby of the state's agricultural industry... Since 1997, through efforts of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, six other labor outfits have been prosecuted for servitude... Companies such as Tropicana [part of PepsiCo], Minute Maid [part of Coca-Cola], Taco Bell [part of Yum!], Wendy's [part of Wendy's/Arby's Group], Burger King, McDonald's, Kroger and Wal-Mart profit from so-called "everyday low prices" made possible on the backs of abused workers.