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Food Source

Having dinner with friends at a farm to table establishment recently, brought to mind this story about how prison labor is involved in a lot of food we eat. 

The number of people behind bars in the United States started to soar in the 1970s just as Ingram entered the system, disproportionately hitting people of color. Now, with about 2 million people locked up, U.S. prison labor from all sectors has morphed into a multibillion-dollar empire, extending far beyond the classic images of prisoners stamping license plates, working on road crews or battling wildfires.

The world is full of contradictions that make you pause. One the one hand we want to pay a premium for getting very close to nature - organic and foraged food because it promotes positive feels about the provenance of what we eat. But some of the staples that went into putting that wonderful meal together might have not had such beneficent origins. 

..U.S. prison labor is in the supply chains of goods being shipped all over the world via multinational companies, including to countries that have been slapped with import bans by Washington in recent years. For instance, the U.S. has blocked shipments of cotton coming from China, a top manufacturer of popular clothing brands, because it was produced by forced or prison labor. But crops harvested by U.S. prisoners have entered the supply chains of companies that export to China.

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