Three years ago, the U.S. Department of Labor identified Cincinnati-based Kroger as a buyer of watermelons harvested by workers trapped in a brutal forced labor operation. At the time, we at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers wrote to Kroger in these pages, urging the grocery giant to join the Fair Food Program, the only human rights enforcement program in agriculture proven to prevent forced labor and other severe abuses before workers are harmed.
Three years later, Kroger still refuses.
Why prevention matters
That refusal matters because just weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Justice announced another conviction in that same forced labor case. Alexander Villatoro Moreno, a key member of the trafficking operation, was extradited from Mexico, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to 70 months in prison.
Federal prosecutors described a familiar pattern. Workers were recruited from Mexico through fraud, saddled with crushing recruitment debts, stripped of their passports, housed in degrading conditions, threatened with arrest and deportation, and warned that their families back home could be harmed if they resisted.
And the Villatoro case is hardly an isolated incident.
Around the same time the Villatoro case was wrapping up, farmworkers in North Carolina filed a class-action lawsuit alleging wage theft, passport confiscation, illegal recruitment fees, threats, and the denial of drinking water, bathrooms, and medical care during episodes of dangerous heat stress. And, yet again, publicly available information indicates that Kroger purchased produce from the company where the plaintiffs say they worked.
That marks the fourth time in just five years that Kroger has been linked to allegations of forced labor or similarly egregious labor abuses in its produce supply chain.
Enough is enough.
Justice is important. But justice that comes only after workers have endured coercion, violence, and exploitation is not enough.
For those of us who have spent decades fighting modern-day slavery in U.S. agriculture, one lesson has become unmistakably clear: If our goal is to end forced labor, prosecutions alone will never get us there. We must prevent these crimes before workers become victims.
A choice Kroger can make
That is precisely what the Fair Food Program was built to do.
Instead of relying on voluntary corporate promises or social audits that repeatedly fail to detect abuse, the Fair Food Program changes the economics that allow exploitation to flourish. Participating buyers use their purchasing power to reward growers who respect workers’ rights and cut off those who do not. Workers receive education about their rights, access to a 24-hour complaint hotline, protection from retaliation, and independent monitoring that identifies problems while they are still small enough to be corrected − not after they have grown into forced labor operations.
Had those protections been in place on the melon farms involved in the Villatoro case, workers would have had safe ways to report abuse, investigators would have intervened early, and the conditions that allowed forced labor to take root could have been dismantled long before federal prosecutors needed to get involved.
Instead, Kroger continues to rely on the same voluntary social auditing systems that have repeatedly failed to detect forced labor before workers are harmed.
Three years ago, we asked whether having a modern-day slavery case surface every year or two was an acceptable level of risk for Kroger, so long as produce continued arriving on store shelves on time, at the right quality, and at the right price.
Three years later, that question remains unanswered.
Many of Kroger’s competitors have already answered it. Walmart, Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe’s, Giant, Stop & Shop, and The Fresh Market have all joined the Fair Food Program, using their purchasing power to help prevent forced labor rather than merely respond to it after the damage has been done.
Ending modern-day slavery requires more than successful prosecutions. It requires changing the conditions that allow slavery to exist in the first place.
That is the power of the Fair Food Program: the power of prevention. And it is long past time for Kroger to embrace it.
Lucas Benitez, a co-founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and former farmworker, is a recipient of both the RFK Human Rights Award and the 2014 Clinton Global Citizen Award for his pioneering work with the CIW. He received the 2023 Wallenberg Medal for his extraordinary contribution to the field of human rights.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Kroger must do more to prevent forced labor | Opinion
Reporting by Lucas Benitez, Opinion contributor / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Lucas Benitez, Opinion contributor | USA TODAY Network
