CBS News Sunday Morning: “How the Fair Food Program is making a difference for struggling migrant farm workers…”

Posted on by CIW

 

Following powerful CBS story, viewers take to social media to call out Publix for “unconscionable” refusal to join FFP…

Yesterday morning, as they do every week, millions of viewers across the U.S. tuned into CBS News Sunday Morning, but this time they were in for a rare treat on network television: an excellent, in-depth report on the CIW’s Fair Food Program.  Brought to us by correspondent Mark Strassmann and producer Mark Hudspeth, the piece traced the hard-fought transformation of Florida’s fields from the “Harvest of Shame” days in 1960 to what is being called the best working environment in American agriculture in the New York Times today. The CBS Sunday Morning “cover story” featured not only interviews with CIW members, but also with representatives of the Fair Food Standards Council, participating growers, and buyers such as Whole Foods, in whose produce aisles the Fair Food label recently debuted.   

If you have not yet had a chance to see the piece, make sure to take a few minutes to watch the embedded video above now — and then take a few more moments to share it far and wide!

The response from viewers across the country to the Sunday Morning segment — and to the remarkable impact of the Fair Food Program — was instantaneous and overwhelmingly positive, triggering a flood of emails, posts and tweets from consumers asking where they could find the Fair Food label, how they could get their hands on the Fair Food t-shirt that CIW member Gerardo Reyes was sporting in the segment (which, by the way, you can find here!) and how they could support the Program.  We don’t possibly have room for all of the messages in one post, but we wanted to share at least a few of the highlights!

Here are just some of the comments from the Twitterverse and Facebook:

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In addition to telling the story of the Fair Food Program, CBS Sunday Morning identified the major U.S. supermarkets that remained stubbornly opposed to the progress taking root in the fields — supermarkets like Publix.  And Publix’s response — or rather, the company’s stale attempt to justify its decision to dodge responsibility, both to farmworkers and to their own consumers — fell completely flat with CBS Sunday Morning’s astute, ethically-minded audience:

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In the 21st century, consumers have come to expect far more from their grocers than public relations pablum when it comes to social responsibility.  Real, verifiable protection of fundamental human rights in corporate supply chains is no longer some vague aspirational goal, but rather the starting point for social accountability in the age of the internet, social media, and ever greater consumer choice.  There can be no doubt that, after Sunday’s show, companies like Publix, Kroger and Wendy’s will be fielding many more questions in the days and months ahead about why there is no Fair Food label in their stores — and struggling, more than ever, to provide an answer.

In the wake of last week’s news of the Ahold joining the Fair Food Program, and now of this powerful new piece from CBS News, the pressure is growing on Publix and other retailers still pining for the good old days to step up to the modern standards of social responsibility, to the new day where farmworkers play a leading role in the monitoring and protection of their own rights. Check back soon for many more examples of the growing consumer chorus for Fair Food!