Forced Labor & Supply Chains

In a House Ways and Means Committee field hearing in Kimball, MN last week, Congressman Dan Kildee, a Michigan Democrat and forceful advocate for his state's sugar beet industry, made a powerful statement against forced labor at a sugarcane plantation owned by the sugar program's biggest beneficiary, the Fanjul family. In his words: 

”Last year, Congressman Earl Blumenauer and I traveled to the Dominican Republic to meet with workers there. What we saw, what I would say, is the closest thing that I've ever seen to modern slavery—workers who were forced into dangerous working conditions, didn’t receive the pay they were do often, living in abhorrent housing conditions. Forced labor has no place in the U.S. supply chain.”

We applaud Congressman Kildee for this statement. We hope he takes the next step and helps put an end to federal subsidization of forced labor in the Dominican Republic. After all, the family that owns the plantation where modern slavery is happening — the Fanjul family — is also the largest beneficiary of the sugar program in the United States. The Fanjuls are also major donors to Congressman Kildee.

It's hard to imagine hardworking, honest, tax-paying sugar beet farmers — like Kildee's constituents or the good people of Kimball, MN — want anything to do with the Fanjuls and modern slavery. But the sugar program couples them together. They are inextricably linked — and therefore, complicit.

It's unfair to put them in that position. But this is the tragic outcome of the sugar program as it stands today. 

That's why we're calling for change. Make a contribution to help us raise our voice and press for progress.