Yesterday the United Farm Workers (UFW) launched the “Take Our Jobs” campaign, a bold effort to highlight the importance of immigrant workers to our food supply -- and the difficulties agricultural employers have in maintaining a stable, legal workforce.  As UFW points out on their campaign website, “We are a nation in denial about our food supply."

During a news conference yesterday, UFW President Arturo Rodriguez argued:

Farm workers do the work that most Americans are not willing to do. Our current labor force is comprised of professional farm workers who possess essential skills needed to maintain the viability of the agricultural industry. But our nation’s struggling economy has fueled an increasingly ugly debate on immigration policy and many Americans believe that undocumented farm workers are taking jobs from our citizens and legal residents.

Either Congress acts to bring a solution, or we will continue to see our food production move to other countries. The United States depends on these farms and farm workers for food.

A statement by the union explains further:

County Supervisor Rubio, who represents the second largest agricultural county in the nation, said the industry is utterly dependent on a foreign-born workforce. And even with double digit unemployment rates, few legal residents are seeking jobs on the farm, he said.

According to Marisa Treviño at Latina Lista:

In a letter to U.S. lawmakers, UFW offers farm workers who are "ready to train citizens and legal residents who wish to replace immigrants in the fields," and encourages Members of Congress to refer their constituents to vacant farm worker positions.

While immigrant farm workers are the backbone of United States agriculture, many of these workers have no way to normalize their immigration status – they often live in fear of exploitation and deportation. These workers and their advocates have been asking Congress for years to fix what most everyone agrees is an outdated, ineffective, and inhumane immigration system.

Now, hoping to push Congress to pass what’s known as “AgJobs” legislation, the UFW’s “Take Our Jobs” campaign is a creative attempt to break through the right-wing media narrative that immigrants take jobs from American workers instead of contributing to the U.S. economy and U.S. food security.

So far, people in the agriculture industry appear skeptical that many unemployed Americans will sign up for the farm work, given the strenuous conditions, need to relocate one's family, and low pay. The Silicon Valley Mercury News reports:

Salinas farm labor contractor Paul Powell had not heard about the "Take Our Jobs" campaign Wednesday, but said he doubted that most unemployed Californians would be up to the challenge.

"There may be a lot of folks who show up and don’t stay for more than a day or two," Powell said. "They don’t realize how hard the work is. Field work is not easy."

Manuel Cunha, president of the Fresno-based Nisei Farmers League, sarcastically remarked:

Come out here and climb the ladder, pick tomatoes, and oh, by the way, you’ve got to prune, and oh, by the way, it’s seasonal work so you have to move all over the place.

It seems that the UFW has set up a win-win situation. If it turns out that Americans do take them up on the offer, kudos to them for helping jobless Americans find work and gain skills. If native-born Americans balk and refuse to sign up, lawmakers will have a hard time opposing AgJobs legislation with the claim that immigrants are “stealing American jobs.”  

The offer itself should serve to highlight the hypocrisy of anti-reform politicians who continue to scapegoat vulnerable populations whose labor fuels our economy and feeds our country, instead of reforming our nation's dysfunctional immigration laws.

Even better, UFW has announced a July 8th appearance on the Colbert Report -- stay tuned.

At the very least, we should be able to count on the integrity of our food supply. But we can't. Between corrupt practices like this and the gutting of the FDA during the Bush years, every time we put something into our mouths that wasn't grown and bought locally, we're taking a chance:

Robert Watson, a top ingredient buyer for Kraft Foods, needed $20,000 to pay his taxes. So he called a broker for a California tomato processor that for years had been paying him bribes to get its products into Kraft’s plants.

[...] Over the last 14 months, Mr. Watson and three other purchasing managers, at Frito-Lay, Safeway and B&G Foods, have pleaded guilty to taking bribes. Five people connected to one of the nation’s largest tomato processors, SK Foods, have also admitted taking part in the scheme.

Now, federal prosecutors in California have taken aim at the owner of SK Foods, who they say spearheaded the far-reaching plot. The man, Frederick Scott Salyer, was arrested at Kennedy Airport in New York City on Feb. 4 after getting off a flight from Switzerland. He was indicted last week on racketeering, fraud and obstruction of justice charges.

The scheme, as laid out by federal prosecutors, has two parts. Officials say that Mr. Salyer and others at SK Foods greased the palms of a handful of corporate buyers in exchange for lucrative contracts and confidential information on bids submitted by competitors. This most likely drove up ingredient prices for the big food companies.

In addition, prosecutors say that for years, SK Foods shipped its customers millions of pounds of bulk tomato paste and puree that fell short of basic quality standards — with falsified documentation to mask the problems. Often that meant mold counts so high the sale should have been prohibited under federal law; at other times it involved breaching specifications in the sales contracts, such as acidity levels or the age of the product.

Hmm. Do you think it's really a good idea that one multinational corporation controls the vast majority of the international food supply? Haha, just kidding. Of course it's a good idea! That's why one of the first things we did when we invaded Iraq was to announce a law that farmers could no longer save their own seed:

ST. LOUIS — Confidential contracts detailing Monsanto Co.'s business practices reveal how the world's biggest seed developer is squeezing competitors, controlling smaller seed companies and protecting its dominance over the multibillion-dollar market for genetically altered crops, an Associated Press investigation has found.

With Monsanto's patented genes being inserted into roughly 95 percent of all soybeans and 80 percent of all corn grown in the U.S., the company also is using its wide reach to control the ability of new biotech firms to get wide distribution for their products, according to a review of several Monsanto licensing agreements and dozens of interviews with seed industry participants, agriculture and legal experts.

Declining competition in the seed business could lead to price hikes that ripple out to every family's dinner table. That's because the corn flakes you had for breakfast, soda you drank at lunch and beef stew you ate for dinner likely were produced from crops grown with Monsanto's patented genes.

Monsanto's methods are spelled out in a series of confidential commercial licensing agreements obtained by the AP. The contracts, as long as 30 pages, include basic terms for the selling of engineered crops resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, along with shorter supplementary agreements that address new Monsanto traits or other contract amendments.

The company has used the agreements to spread its technology — giving some 200 smaller companies the right to insert Monsanto's genes in their separate strains of corn and soybean plants. But, the AP found, access to Monsanto's genes comes at a cost, and with plenty of strings attached.

Reuters:

Pet food tainted with the chemical melamine was found in feed rations on a California hog farm and may show up on other U.S. farms, state and federal officials said on Friday.[..]

California officials said Diamond Pet Foods sold pet food to American Hog Co., which used it as a feed ingredient. Tests found melamine in feed at the farm and in urine from the hogs.

Richard Breitmeyer, the state veterinarian, said it was "not uncommon" for pet food makers to sell scrap material to feedlots.

"In the course of our investigation, we may find similar situations in other parts of the country," said Stephen Sundlof, head of the Center for Veterinary Medicine at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, referring to sales of scrap pet food.[..]

State and U.S. Agriculture Department officials said there was no evidence that pork products from the farm entered the food supply but that they were still tracking the whereabouts of all the hogs produced there since April 3. Some 126 of the hogs are known to have been slaughtered for meat

This story just gets worse and worse.

The hits just keep on coming on this story. There's a chance that this gluten will show up in human food now. It's telling that the FDA has yet to release the name of the US distributor of this gluten.

David Goldstein has more:

Del Monte Foods has confirmed that the melamine-tainted wheat gluten used in several of its recalled pet food products was supplied as a "food grade" additive, raising the likelihood that contaminated wheat gluten might have entered the human food supply.

"Yes, it is food grade," Del Monte spokesperson Melissa Murphy-Brown wrote in reply to an e-mail query. Del Monte issued a voluntary recall Saturday for several products under the Gravy Train, Jerky Treats, Pounce, Ol' Roy, Dollar General and Happy Trails brands.

Wheat gluten is sold in both "food grade" and "feed grade" varieties. Either may be used in pet food, but only "food grade" gluten may be used in the manufacture of products meant for human consumption. Published reports have thus far focused on tainted pet food, but if the gluten in question entered the human food supply through a major food products supplier and processor, it could potentially contaminate thousands of products and hundreds of millions of units nationwide.

Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Veterinary Medicine said the FDA is not aware of any contaminated gluten that went into human food but said he could not confirm this "with 100 percent certainty." Wheat gluten is a common food additive used as a thickener, dough conditioner, and meat substitute. It is widely used as an additive in commercial bakery items and special purpose flours.

The FDA announced today that it has traced the contaminated wheat gluten to a single processor, Xuzhou Anying Biological Technology of Peixian, China, but has not released the name of the U.S. distributor who supplied the product to Del Monte, Menu Foods, Nestle Purina, and Hills Nutritional. In all, more than 70 brands and over 60 million cans and pouches of dog and cat food are now part of this massive recall, as well as at least one brand of dry cat food.

In related news, pet status as property may shift after recall (h/t Ilena Rose)

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