Modern slavery at its best.

[Camile]

http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio ... ia/1373950

[Chickpea]

That is shocking. Once the kids asked me why we buy fair-trade bananas but not fair-trade apples. I said the apples were British and we didn't have the same kinds of issues in Europe as they have in South America, for example. Looks like I was wrong.

[Camile]

Well apparently there was more or less the same in the UK with the chinese sea food picker if I remember well ..

[Andy Hamilton]

It would be helpful if we could find out which tomatoes to boycott and which to buy to ensure that our money does not go to these gang masters.

[Camile]

Extract of the article, pretty scarry:

"They're picked in the triangle of the slaves and they end up being used to make the dishes of all of Italy and half of Europe." ..

So I would say if you are going to buy tomotoes .. get the ones from Spain !

[Andy Hamilton]

It is the canned ones I was really thinking about as most of them come from Italy.

[Camile]

if you read the article fully .. these tomatoes are used for the canned ones too ..

more or less any tomatoe product coming from Italy is from that region !

[Andy Hamilton]

if you read the article fully .. these tomatoes are used for the canned ones too ..

more or less any tomatoe product coming from Italy is from that region !

damb it, will have to grow more tomatoes next year. I had no idea.

[Camile]

yep .. polytunnel is on the list for this year .. and it will be defenetly loaded with tomatoes !

I posted this on a few forums .. and one chap was saying "2007 is the 100th anninversary of the abolition of slavery in Europe. " ...

I think they can reset the counter .. well they actually can't count anything ..

[Andy Hamilton]

yep I think that the word certainly needs to be spread on this issue.

[Wombat]

Well, that's pretty disgusting! What's worse is we get flooded here with cheap Italian canned tomatoes, now i know why they are so cheap!

There's one more reason for not buying them!

Nev

[Shirley]

Shocked!!! I wonder whether buying organic or big name tomatoes would help?!

I've posted about it over on Neeps! too.

[hedgewizard]

That's crazy. I grew way too many tomato plants this year, but canning them is a bugger (until I get my pressure canner next year it has to be tomato paste, which is a slow job).

I think we need to e-mail a few manufacturers and supermarkets, see if we can figure out who to boycott.

Seems you can't buy any food at all just lately! I'll hazard a guess and say we could find equally crap conditions in any multinational commodity.

[Stonehead]

I can't believe people are so naive (and don't take that as an insult).

It doesn't matter whether the tomatoes (or other agricultural produce) comes from Italy, Spain, Israel or anywhere else. This sort of thing is replicated all over Europe - and yes, in the UK as well. It also happens in the US and Australia.

The politicians occasionally get up and make a song and dance about illegal immigrants, knowing all along that the cheap labour is critical to keeping food prices down.

The supermarkets know very well what goes on, but they operate at several arms length from the gangs and have complete deniability.

And consumers don't give a damn so long as their food is cheap.

As for identifying which tomatoes came from gangs, well, you'd probably find almost all non-organic stuff comes from these sources as well as a fair proportion of the organic as well.

It's one of lynchpins of cheap food - heavily exploited and abused labour.

And yes, I've worked fruit and veg picking.

[Camile]

It doesn't matter whether the tomatoes (or other agricultural produce) comes from Italy, Spain, Israel or anywhere else. This sort of thing is replicated all over Europe - and yes, in the UK as well. It also happens in the US and Australia.

Good morning ..

When you pick Fruit/Veg, you are defenetly exploited ! but do they all go that far ? do you really think that it's in the same conditions ? beating to death, missing people and so on ?