Out of Season Tomatoes More Messed Up Than You’d Think

A new Gourmet article by Barry Estabrook explains how migrant farm workers in Florida often end up in positions of involuntary servitude, essentially over the production of crappy wintertime tomatoes destined for supermarket bins or as garnish for some jumbo/burger/gordita concoction plucked off a dollar menu. That includes most restaurants in New York City—fast food or otherwise—that buy tomatoes; more information can be found here. Estabrook writes about one worker in particular who was locked up and beaten by a handler, but it’s no isolated case: "Law-enforcement officials have freed more than 1,000 men and women in seven different cases" since 1997, and it’s not just the tomato growing industry. The piece has so far provoked a predictable cavalcade of xenophobic comments, such as, "I wish I could feel sorry for them, but when you go to a foreign country illegally, can't speak, read nor write the common language, then you're asking, no, BEGGING to be taken advantage of like this man was."

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By Hugh Merwin in Food on March 2, 2009 3:45 PM

Comments [rss]

interlard

Comments on this site have really gone downhill.

chopp3r

This is all the vegetarians' fault.

Brado

"I wish I could feel sorry for them, but when you go to a foreign country illegally, can't speak, read nor write the common language, then you're asking, no, BEGGING to be taken advantage of like this man was."

Um, what exactly is wrong with this comment?

JacqueMehoff

this may make me start hating white people,

oops, I think I mentioned that before.

pipsy

This comment is just as ignorant, if not moreso, as you perceive the original comment to be.

JacqueMehoff

I don't know why I'm replying but

if you've seen my other posts, you'll see

this was a take on another poster comment

made during the Sharpton Vs. NY Post Murdoch

/deLonas controversy.

Qraymond

Ah, here comes the xenophobic bullshit.

Felix Hoenikker

"I wish I could feel sorry for them, but when you go to a foreign country illegally, can't speak, read nor write the common language, then you're asking, no, BEGGING to be taken advantage of like this man was."

Ok. Feel sorry for them, but the rest of the statement is spot on. His boss is a raging prick. It's probably still worse wherever he came from.