The lettuce-producing Taylor Farms was linked to the widespread use of prison labor before its involvement in a cyclospora outbreak.

It turns out that Taylor Farms, the agricultural company widely believed to be behind the cyclospora outbreak currently raging throughout the US, is also heavily involved in modern-day forced labor.

In reporting from 2023 that was resurfaced this week on social media, the publication Prison Legal News revealed that Taylor Farms was contracting labor from the Arizona Department of Correction, Rehabilitation, and Reentry for the low, low price of just $4.75 an hour — far below the cost of a non-incarcerated worker the federal minimum wage. (And to be clear, that’s not the hourly wage paid to the inmate, which is capped at $1.50 in Arizona.)

    • edible_funk@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      25 days ago

      Wait, do people actually think that’s what’s caused all this? That was a racist fox news conspiracy theory when it went around a few years back.

      • Wildmimic@anarchist.nexusEnglish
        15·
        25 days ago

        There are many diseases that can get transferred specifically by blood and feces. Those situations happen if you abuse your workers by overworking and underpaying them, while neglecting even their most basic needs like a damn toilet.

        Doesn’t change the fact that fox only spread that info to rile people up without explaining the surrounding circumstances.

        • edible_funk@lemmy.worldEnglish
          22·
          25 days ago

          Yeah but that’s not gonna cause outbreaks at this level. This is clearly a systemic failure regarding food safety, sanitation, and general oversight throughout Taylor Farms operations. This isn’t because somebody shat in a field. Like, that’s not what caused anything, it’s just fox news racism.

          • Wildmimic@anarchist.nexusEnglish
            6·
            25 days ago

            The parasite in question spreads through excrements. But i agree that to reach this scale, there must be multiple issues; a single sick worker can’t cause this if there are protocols in place to prevent this. Maybe there was an large-scale outbreak in their workforce that everyone ignored. Maybe machines processing the produce weren’t cleaned after an incident. In the end, someone there was very sick, and management ignored it.

          • wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
            5·
            24 days ago

            Also, this specific species is only passed, as far as we are aware, through HUMAN faeces. From what I can tell by reading the WHO’s analysis of the organism from a few years back, it was either caused by watering the plants with water FULL of infested faecal matter, or fertilising them with fresh human shit.