Cargill & ADM: Supporting Slavery?
Tim Newman, Campaigns Assistant, International Labor Rights Forum
U.S.-based agricultural companies Cargill (whose CEO is Gregory Page -- photo below and right) and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) (whose CEO is Patricia Woertz -- photo on the left) are currently aggressively lobbying members of the Senate and House Agr
iculture Committees to try to get them to drop Section 3105 of the Farm Bill which would establish a voluntary certification program related to imports made using forced labor and child labor.
Click here to send an e-mail to Cargill and ADM and keep reading to find out why their lobbyists are fighting to defend slavery.
Section 3105 of the Farm Bill, called Voluntary Certification of Child Labor Status of Agricultural Imports, would provide a method which producers of agricultural products could use to certify that their products are free of child labor and forced labor. The Department of Labor, under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005, is compiling a list of imported goods believed to be produced using forced labor or child labor in violation of international standards.
Seventy percent of the world’s child labor is concentrated in the agricultural sector, where vulnerable children toil in blazing heat, exposed to dangerous farm machinery and deadly pesticides. Working children are also deprived of an adequate education. Provision 3105 would provide a step forward in working to eliminate the worst forms of child labor and forced labor around the world, in conformance with existing U.S. law.
If Cargill and ADM are already obeying international and U.S. laws against using forced and child labor, then they should have nothing to fear about this provision. So the question is: what are Cargill and ADM afraid of and why are they paying their lobbyists to defend slave labor? Seems pretty fishy to me.
For more information about this issue, you can read ILRF's statement with Global Exchange, Rainforest Action Network and Stop the Traffik here. You can read the text of the provision here and a letter of support for the provision from ILRF here. Don't forget to let Cargill and ADM know how you feel!
Finally, you can find the members of the House Agriculture Committee here and the Senate Agriculture Committee here. Let them know that they should stand up against slavery and they should not give in to Cargill and ADM!
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