Risk of forced labour embedded in the US fruit and vegetable supply

Abstract

Sustainable food consumption studies have largely focused on promoting human health within ecological limits. Less attention has been paid to social sustainability, in part because of limited data and models. Globally, agriculture has one of the highest incidences of forced labor, with exploitative conditions enabled by low margins, domestic labor scarcity, inadequate legal protections for workers, and high labor requirements. This research assesses the forced labor risk embedded in the US retail supply of fruits and vegetables. We demonstrate there is risk of forced labor in a broad set of fruit and vegetable commodities, with a small number of commodities accounting for a significant fraction of total forced labor risk at the retail supply level. These findings signal potential trade-offs and synergies across dimensions of food systems sustainability and the need for novel research approaches to develop evidence-based forced labor risk mitigation strategies. MainAn estimated 1.8 million workers globally are subjected to forced labor in agriculture and fishing. 1 This means that in order to meet the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8.7 by 2030, exploitive working conditions for over 600 workers need to be eradicated each day. 2 Defined by the International Labour Organization, "forced labor refers to situations in which persons are coerced to work through the use of violence or intimidation, or by more subtle means such as accumulated debt, retention of identity papers, or threats of denunciation to immigration authorities." 3 Within agriculture, the conditions for forced labor to occur are shaped by remote and isolated work environments, low margins, seasonal work, inadequate legal protections, shifts toward piece rate pay systems, sustained downward pressure on prices,

Promoting sustainable healthy diet: pre-registered protocol

“…Such diets are characterized by being nutritionally-balanced patterns, mainly (if not totally) based on whole plant-sourced foods, obtained from fair sources, and with minimal food waste [2]. In past decades, the way food is produced and consumed is far from being healthy or sustainable: (i) unhealthy diets are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide [3]; (ii) healthy diets are not affordable and accessible to a large proportion of the world's population [4]; (iii) the current food system is among the main drivers of the environmental pollution and natural resources usage [5]; and (iv) at the socio-economical and ethical level, there are countless cases of forced labor conditions and unfair salaries across the food system [6]. Altogether, changing the current food system towards a sustainable healthy one is timely.…”

“…Evaluating all these dimensions at once within interventions is crucial because they are not necessarily aligned. For instance, fish is a healthy food but could be obtained from overexploited fish stocks, exacerbating the environmental damage [11]; or even if captured from sustainable sources and using environmentally responsible techniques, labor conditions for fisheries workers could not be fair, compromising their well-being [6].…”

Modern slavery risk assessment

“…In this issue of Nature Food, Blackstone et al (2021) develop a data-driven methodological approach for evaluating the risk of forced labor and apply it for assessing related risks embedded in US retail supply of fruits and vegetables. The authors draw on principles of social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) for their aggregate level analysis of forced labor risk.…”

“…Workers, growers and buyers such as supermarkets and restaurant chains collaborate on a code of conduct with explicit market sanctions and a monitoring system with a rapid investigation and responses that protect and improve tomato pickers' working conditions (Marquis, 2017). Blackstone et al (2021) provide a methodology for measuring forced labor risks in agrifood supply chains through a triangulation of risk indicators and thus contribute to uncover a neglected aspect of social sustainability of food systems. Its data-based analysis at an aggregated level can direct business, government and society resources to those commodity-country combinations where interventions can yield the most impact and avoid risk shifting (i.e., exploiters moving to another geographic region or shifting to another commodity).…”

“…The UN Sustainable Development Goal 8.7 stipulates to end all forms of labor exploitation by 2030 and relies on the development and integration of evidence-based risk assessment and prioritization methodologies as the one proposed by Blackstone et al (2021) for agricultural food production. The use of multi-source data for triangulation and continuous update of data is critical.…”