Pacific Standard Magazine mentions Equitable Food Initiative (EFI) as one of the food certifications that tells you that no migrant was harmed in the process of securing food.
Andrea Delgado, legislative director for healthy communities at the California-based non-profit Earthjustice, says we need a fair farmwork label to say, “This product came to you, and no worker was made ill or injured or poisoned before it got to you.” Some organizations are aiming for just that. The Washington, D.C.-based Equitable Food Initiative, for example.
EFI includes labor conditions along with food safety and pest management in its standards for produce with the EFI label. Since 2014, EFI has certified 13 farming operations in the U.S., three in Canada, 14 in Mexico, and one in Guatemala. It’s a positive step but a small one. For the most part, farmworkers continue to be left out of the equation—merely “an afterthought”—when their health and well-being should be central to equitable food debates, says Flores López of East Coast Migrant Head Start Project. Higher wages could make all the difference—but “companies keep trying to scare people: If we pay people a fair living wage, it’s going to skyrocket prices,” she says. “In reality, it’s not. It’ll be pennies to the pound.”
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