#undocumented migrant farm workers

[reasonsforhope]

"California will begin paying for free legal help with immigration for undocumented farmworkers who are involved in state investigations of wage theft or other labor violations, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced this week.

The $4.5 million pilot program will provide qualifying farmworkers with referrals for legal help with their immigration status. 

Roughly half of California’s farmworker population is believed to be undocumented. Fear of deportation and difficulties finding jobs can discourage workers from filing labor complaints or serving as witnesses in cases alleging unsafe work temperatures, wage theft, or employer retaliation for unionizing, officials said...

Respecting immigrant rights

Farmworkers in labor investigations who qualify for the new state program will receive a direct referral to legal services organizations that already offer immigration services, such as the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County or the United Farm Workers Foundation, which spoke in support of the program. 

The free legal services workers could receive include case review, legal advice and representation by an attorney, according to Newsom’s office...

Deferred deportation

State officials said the pilot program aligns with a new Biden administration policy that makes it easier for undocumented workers who are victims of labor rights violations to request deferred action from deportation. Because the federal Department of Homeland Security can’t respond to all immigration violations, it exercises “prosecutorial discretion” to decide who to try to deport.

State officials said they won’t ask for workers’ immigration status, but noncitizens granted this deferred action may be eligible for work authorization.

This year, California labor department officials began supporting undocumented workers’ requests for prosecutorial discretion or deferred action from federal immigration officials, including when employers threaten workers with immigration enforcement to prevent workers from cooperating with state investigators. 

“The Department of Industrial Relations’ Labor Commissioner’s Office … was the first state agency to request deferred action from DHS for employees in an active investigation, and that request was successful,” Hickey said. “This is an important process for undocumented workers to be aware of.”"

-via CalMatters, July 21, 2023

[crazy-pages]

A company owned by two of Donald Trump’s top mega-donors has routinely brought dozens of its workers from Mexico to staff its warehouses in Wisconsin and other locations even though they do not appear to have permission to work in the US.

This is not a contradiction. ICE is the bogeyman these employers use to keep their undocumented workers in line and ununionized. If they ever feel like their workers are starting to get uppity, or just feel like terrorizing them to keep them in line, ICE is the tool they use to do that. Just send them in to raid a trailer parkor a company provided housing block, ruined a few dozen lives, and in doing so terrorize the rest of them or their replacements into submission.

And if enforcement ever gets so intense they run out of desperate people coming to the US for work? Well the deportation wait times will just get longer, and the 14th Amendment will be used to pressgang them back into the same jobs as legally enslaved prisoners. Pressganged prisoners are already the source of a lot of United States manufacturing labor.

I need to make this really clear, we are not identifying a hypocrisy and these employers are not going to get what's coming to them when their workforce gets deported. This is the point. This Is how they maintain control. Part of the reason it's been getting more intense is because migrant farm workers have actually gotten better at organizing even in the face of these terror tactics so these employers are doubling down.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Greg Sargent at TNR:

There are still nearly two months to go before Donald Trump assumes the presidency again, but Republicans or GOP-adjacent industries have already begun to admit out loud that some of his most important policy promises could prove disastrous in their parts of the country. These folks don’t say this too directly, out of fear of offending the MAGA God King. Instead, they suggest gingerly that a slight rethink might be in order. But unpack what they’re saying, and you’ll see that they’re in effect acknowledging that some of Trump’s biggest campaign promises were basically scams.

In Georgia, for instance, some local Republicans are openly worried about Trump’s threat to roll back President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. The IRA is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into incentives for the manufacture and purchase of green energy technologies, from electric vehicles to batteries to solar power. Trump endlessly derided this as the “green new scam” and pledged to repeal all uncommitted funds. But now The New York Times reports that Trump supporters like state Representative Beth Camp fear that repeal could destroy jobs related to new investments in green manufacturing plants in the state. Camp worries that this could leave factories in Georgia “sitting empty.” You heard that right: This Republican is declaring that Trump’s threatened actions could leave factories sitting empty. 

[...]

Something similar is also already happening with Trump’s threat to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Reuters reports that agriculture interests, which are heavily concentrated in GOP areas, are urging the incoming Trump administration to refrain from removing untold numbers of migrants working throughout the food supply chain, including in farming, dairy, and meatpacking. 

Notably, GOP Representative John Duarte, who just lost his seat in the elections, explicitly tells Reuters that farming interests in his California district depend on undocumented immigrants—and that Trump should exempt many from removal. Duarte and industry representatives want more avenues created for migrants to work here legally—the precise opposite of what Trump promised. Now over to Texas. NPR reports that various industries there fear that mass deportations could cripple them, particularly in construction, where nearly 300,000 undocumented immigrants toiled as of 2022. Those workers enable the state to keep growing despite a native population that isn’t supplying a large enough workforce. Local analysts and executives want Trump to refrain from removing all these people or create new ways for them to work here legally. Even the Republican mayor of McKinney, Texas, is loudly sounding the alarm.

Meanwhile, back in Georgia, Trump’s threat of mass deportations is awakening new awareness that undocumented immigrants drive industries like construction, landscaping, and agriculture, reports The Wall Street Journal. In Dalton, a town that backed Trump, fear is spreading that removals could “upend its economy and workforce.” At this point, someone will argue that all this confirms Trump’s arguments—that these industries and their representatives merely fear losing cheap migrant labor that enables them to avoid paying Americans higher wages. When JD Vance and Trump pushed their lie about Haitians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, Vance insisted that he opposed the Haitian influx into Midwestern towns because they’re undercutting U.S. workers. But all these disparate examples of Republicans and GOP areas lamenting coming mass deportations suggest an alternate story, one detailed well by the Times’ Lydia DePillis. In the MAGA worldview, a large reserve of untapped native-born Americans in prime working age are languishing in joblessness throughout Trump country—and will stream into all these industries once migrants are removed en masse, boosting wages.  

But DePillis documents that things like poor health and disability are more important drivers of unemployment among this subset of non-college working-age men. Besides, migrants living and working here don’t just perform labor that Americans will not. They also consume and boost demand, creating more jobs. As Paul Krugman puts it, in all these ways, migrant laborers are “complements” to U.S. workers. Importantly, that’s the argument that these Republicans and industries in GOP areas are really making when they lament mass deportations: Migrant labor isn’t displacing U.S. workers; it’s helping drive our post-Covid recovery and growth. This directly challenges Trump’s zero-sum worldview.

[...] Here’s another possibility: In the end, Trump’s deportation forces may selectively spare certain localities and industries from mass removals. Trump’s incoming “border czar,” Tom Homan, suggests this won’t happen. But a hallmark of MAGA is corruptly selective governance in the interests of MAGA nation and expressly against those who are designated MAGA’s enemies, U.S. citizens included. One can see mass deportations becoming a selective tool, in which blue localities are targeted for high-profile raids—even as Trump triumphantly rants that they are cesspools of “migrant crime” that he is pacifying with military-style force—while GOP-connected industries and Trump-allied Republicans tacitly secure some forbearance.

Donald Trump’s threats to green energy initiatives and resistance to his mass deportation proposals are facing headwinds against him, even from local Republicans who fear losses of jobs in their communities.

Even if Trump does get to implement his mass deportation policy, he’ll likely create several exemption carveouts (mainly for industries likely to favor him) and use selective enforcement (light touch for red states, heavy and punitive for blue states).

[beardedmrbean]

Dozens of Indian farm labourers have been freed from slave-like working conditions in northern Italy, police have said.

The 33 workers were lured to Italy on the promise of jobs and a better future by two fellow Indian nationals, police say.

But instead, they were allegedly forced to work more than 10 hours a day, seven days a week for a tiny wage which was used to pay off debts to the alleged gangmasters.

The two men - who were found with approximately $545,300 (£420,000) - have been arrested.

The exploitation of farmhands – both Italian and migrant - in Italy is a well-known issue. Thousands of people work in fields, vineyards and greenhouses dotted across the country, often without contracts and in highly dangerous conditions.

Just last month, an Indian fruit picker died after his arm was severed in a work accident.

The man had allegedly been left on the side of the road following the accident, which also left his legs crushed.

His employer is now under investigation for criminal negligence and manslaughter.

The 33 men rescued by police in the Province of Verona had paid €17,000 ($18,554, £14,293) or 1.5m rupees each in return for seasonal work permits and jobs, according to a police statement sent to the BBC.

To raise the funds, police said, some pawned their family assets, while others borrowed the money from their employers.

But they were only paid €4 per hour for their 10 to 12-hour days, with that sum settling any debt owed.

Their passports were also confiscated as soon as they arrived in Italy and they were banned from leaving their "dilapidated" apartments.

"Every morning, the workers piled into vehicles covered in tarpaulin where they hid among boxes of vegetables until they reached the Verona countryside for work," the police statement said.

Searches of their apartments showed the workers were "forced to live in precarious and degrading conditions" and "in total violation of health and hygiene regulations", it added.

The rescued workers have received their passports back and are being helped by social services and a migration organisation to relocate to safer housing and working conditions.

The two alleged gangmasters are now facing charges related to exploitation and slavery, police told Reuters news agency.

Undocumented labourers across Italy are often subject to a system known as “caporalato” – a gangmaster system which sees middlemen illegally hiring labourers who are then forced to work for very low salaries. Even workers with regular papers are often paid well below the legal wage.

Almost a quarter of the agricultural workforce in Italy in 2018 was employed under this method, according to a study by the Italian National Institute of Statistics. The practice also affects workers in the service industry and building sectors.

It was outlawed in Italy in 2016 after an Italian woman died of a heart attack after working 12-hour shifts picking and sorting grapes, for which she was paid €27 a day.

[davidaugust]

“You heard that right: This Republican is declaring that Trump’s threatened actions could leave factories _sitting empty_.

One of Trump’s central campaign claims was that Biden’s green energy investments will cause enormous job losses in manufacturing sectors like the traditional auto industry. In reality, the IRA is spurring an outpouring of private investment that’s creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs, many in advanced manufacturing and well suited for people without college degrees—in the very areas that in MAGA folklore were abandoned by liberal and Democratic elites.

Notably, GOP Representative John Duarte, who just lost his seat in the elections, explicitly tells Reuters that farming interests in his California district depend on undocumented immigrants—and that Trump should exempt many from removal. Duarte and industry representatives want more avenues created for migrants to work here legally—the precise opposite of what Trump promised.

As Paul Krugman puts it, in all these ways, migrant laborers are ‘complements’ to U.S. workers. Importantly, that’s the argument that these Republicans and industries in GOP areas are really making when they lament mass deportations: Migrant labor isn’t displacing U.S. workers; it’s helping drive our post-Covid [sic] recovery and growth. This directly challenges Trump’s zero-sum worldview.

At the most basic level, Trump-MAGA ‘American carnage’ mythology holds that reversing the elite-engineered energy transition and purging the nation of millions of undesirable migrants are key to rescuing left-behind areas from stagnation—and rebuilding the foundations of virtuous, long-term working-class flourishing. In reality, the green transition and immigration are potential keys to revitalization. It’s striking to see Republicans already more or less confirming this themselves.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/189054/trump-immigration-threats-republican-resistance

[seriousbusinessforhumans]

THE NEW GOLD STANDARD

Worker-Driven Social Responsibility

Unlike many traditional Corporate Social Responsibility models, and even many multi-stakeholder certification programs that rely on social auditing, the Fair Food Program is a human rights program that is designed, monitored, and enforced by the very workers whose rights it is intended to protect. 

From extreme poverty to sexual harassment and even modern-day slavery, farmworkers have faced abuses at work for decades, even centuries. Because workers are the only actors in the supply chain with a vital and abiding interest in seeing that their rights are effectively monitored and enforced, they have, in the case of the Fair Food Program, constructed a system that actually works.

“even when labor laws do apply to agricultural workers, there is nearly no way to enforce them. Take California…the agency responsible for monitoring workplace safety there [Cal/OSHA] is so understaffed that it currently has roughly 1 field inspector available for every 91,000 workers.”

“Even when there are consequences they can be laughable. After two farmworkers in Idaho drowned in pits of cow manure at dairy operations, OSHA imposed fined of just $5,000 for each of the men’s deaths.”

“…Farm Labor Contractors, who hire workers and then contract them out, and who have found to be the worst violators of federal employment law in agriculture. Some of them have confiscated worker’s passports, charged them if they wanted to quit their jobs or threatened them with deportation.”

[cleoselene]

since immigrant scare shit is going on in the media, would like to share some information I learned in my graduate-level immigration class, taught by Alejandro Portes, one of the foremost immigration scholars in the nation, on staff at Princeton and UM:

-the idea that Trump pushes that "they're not sending their best" is about the most false thing you can say about immigrants. Think about it. A lot of these people are going through extraordinary turmoil, expense, and effort to move. Much more than most of us would be willing to go through. The people who do this by nature are highly motivated and thus tend to be very hardworking, and smart if not educated (though many of them are highly educated, too!). Think about how much it sucks to move. Think about doing that across countries, against a tide of legal red tape, political hatred, and massive expense. It's a lot.

-immigrant enclaves tend to be low in crime. Immigrants are not highly criminal people, no matter what Republicans are trying to tell you. In fact, they are often more careful about obeying the law because they are either not citizens and thus at risk for deportation, or highly aware that they are representing their culture/people.

-in fact, immigrant enclaves are so effective at keeping down crime that studies have shown that the only time people from these families tend to be more prone to crime is after they have assimilated, often the second or third generation, and have had their enclaves eroded and pushed into other low-income, high crime areas. That is to say: they tend to only become criminal when or if they learn it from us.

-the US economy is in a boom period right now. Everywhere is hiring. We NEED labor. We are sort of unique in this globally right now: other economies did not land as softly as the United States' after the pandemic, we are looking at full employment at the moment, rising wages, and lowering inflation. People are coming to America because the demands of global capitalism have pulled them here. This is why migration happens in general. Global capitalism is like a wind, and it pulls people where the labor is needed. We need farm workers, especially, which, if you're not aware, if often undocumented immigrant labor. You mad about the price of groceries? Well, you can't be mad about migrants, then. You don't get to be mad about both and think the problem will solve itself. Throughout history, labor has been pulled to a country where it's needed, whether by voluntary immigration, incentivized immigration, or forced immigration (the example here would be American slavery. These people were forced to immigrate). In the end, the reasoning is always about making money. If we didn't need labor, they'd go somewhere else.

[gatheringbones]

[“Both the US and UK typically tie domestic workers’ visas to a specific employer. As a result, a staggering 80 per cent of migrant domestic workers entering the US find that they have been deceived about their contract, and 78 per cent have had employers threaten them with deportation if they complain. In the UK, these ‘tied visas’ were only introduced – by Prime Minister Theresa May, who was home secretary at the time – in 2012, so it is possible to see their effect very clearly. Migrant domestic workers who entered the UK after 2012 on a tied visa are twice as likely to be physically abused by their employers as those who arrived on a visa that gave them the right to change employers. Compared to migrant domestic workers on the previous, more flexible form of visa, those on tied visas are substantially more likely to be underpaid, assaulted, and overworked, to be expected to sleep on the floor, and to have their passports confiscated by their employers. Punitive immigration law produces harm.

However, much mainstream trafficking discourse characterises the abuse of migrants and people selling sex as the work of individual bad actors, external to and independent of state actions and political choices. Sometimes this discourse works not only to obscure the role of the state but to absolve it. One feminist commentator, for example, writes of the sex trade that ‘criminalisation doesn’t rape and beat women. Men do’. From this, we might conclude that changing the law is pointless because, what makes women vulnerable is simply men. This may feel true for women who do not have to contend with immigration law, police, or the constant fear of deportation, but we can see from the results of tied visas that the legal context – including migration law – is heavily implicated in producing vulnerability and harm.

For undocumented migrant workers looking to challenge bad workplace conditions, penalties do not stop at deportation; instead, these workers face criminalisation if they are discovered. In the UK, someone convicted of ‘illegal working’ can face up to fifty-one weeks in prison, an unlimited fine, and the prospect of their earnings being confiscated as the ‘proceeds of crime’. This increases undocumented people’s justified fear of state authorities and makes them even less able to report labour abuses. Such laws therefore heighten their vulnerability and directly push them into exploitative working environments, thereby creating a supply of highly vulnerable, ripe-for-abuse workers. Increasingly, border enforcement is infiltrating new areas of civic life. Landlords are now expected to check tenants’ immigration status before renting to them; proposals have been floated to freeze or close the bank accounts of undocumented people, and a documentation check was introduced in England when accessing both healthcare and education, as part of an explicit ‘hostile environment’ policy (although both have been challenged by migrants’ rights organisers, including in court). The UK devotes far more resources to policing migration than it does to preventing the exploitation of workers. Researcher Bridget Anderson notes that ‘the [National Minimum Wage] had 93 compliance officers in 2009 and the Gangmasters Licensing Authority [which works to protect vulnerable and exploited workers] had 25 inspectors … The proposed number of UK Border Agency Staff for Local Immigration teams … is 7,500.’

This is the context in which commercial sex frequently occurs. Undocumented or insecurely documented people are enmeshed within a punitive, state-enforced infrastructure of deportability, disposability, and precarity. Any work they do – whether it is at a restaurant, construction site, cannabis farm, nail bar, or brothel – carries a risk of being detained, jailed, or deported. In any work they do, they will be unable to assert labour rights. Even renting a home or accessing healthcare can be difficult. All this makes undocumented people more dependent on those who can help them – such as the people they paid to helped them cross the border, or an unscrupulous employer. It should therefore be no surprise that some undocumented migrants are pushed into sex work by those they rely on, or that some enter into it even if the working conditions are exploitative or abusive.”]

molly smith, juno mac, from revolting prostitutes: the fight for sex workers’ rights, 2018

[ndfan3]

The Strange Message in the Parchment, The Nancy Drew Mystery Stories #54 (1977)

One of the more recent titles in the Mystery Stories series, this tale involves Nancy and her friends in yet another fight against kidnappers and extortionists. The story kicks off with a sheep farmer receiving a strange telephone message instructing him to decipher the writing on some paintings on parchment he bought as a curiosity to “right a great wrong”. His daughter, Junie, contacts Nancy and asks the young detective to help find out what the message and its alleged “great wrong” might mean. She Junie, commence their investigations and soon find themselves up against a suspicious and dangerous Italian named Sal Rocco, possibly involved in trafficking undocumented migrants to local farms. While investigating this angle the girls rescue an abused child, Tony, who has been staying with his uncle Rocco and threaten the man with the police.

Nancy then calls in the assistance of Bess and George and together the group of young women set out to solve the mystery of the parchments and capture the villain behind the mysterious goings on. They soon establish Tony’s mother in Italy is a talented artist who put together the paintings on the parchment before Sal stole them and abducted Tony. He now runs a fake union scam amongst the migrant workers. This leads to the girls being kidnapped and tied up by Ricco’s hired muscle, but they manage to escape and then turn the workers against the exploiter leading him to confess and surrender to Nancy and her friends in order to get them to summon the police to protect him.

Despite the Italian stereotypes, this is a curiously modern tale given our current vexed debates about illegal migration and the role of organised crime in trafficking. Not the best Nancy novel, but worth checking out.

[benjaminrussell]

Welcome To The Circus

Fandom: 911 Lone Star Relationship: Nancy/Mateo, Nancy&TK&Tim Rating: Gen WC: 1.7k

Summary: A call turns dangerous for Mateo, but while he's trapped he makes a new friend.

Nancy watched from the sidelines as Mateo entered one of the farm outbuildings, decked out head to toe in protective gear in deference to the fact that it was on fire. Judd followed him in, and then Nancy lost sight of them both. The 126 had been called to a farm fire, but on arrival, they’d realised that the owner was missing, which was why the firefighters were searching the various buildings in case he was unconscious somewhere. There was a man who was likely an undocumented migrant worker, who was clearly scared of something, but even Mateo talking to him in Spanish hadn’t gotten any answers out of him. Nancy and TK had given him a once over, but he didn’t seem hurt, so they’d then just left him be. Now they were just waiting for an indication they were needed, whether that be for the owner when he was finally found, or (hopefully not) for one of the crew.

Read on AO3

[tomorrowusa]

Climate-denying Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is making it more difficult to rebuild parts of his state devastated by major hurricanes because of his so called "war on woke".

Immigrant workers from across the US raced to Florida to help rebuild after Hurricane Ian devastated the region. But now, nearly a year later and days after another major hurricane hit, some of those workers say this time they’re staying home. Saket Soni, whose nonprofit Resilience Force advocates for thousands of disaster response workers, says there’s one clear reason behind the shift: Florida’s new immigration law, which Gov. Ron DeSantis has championed. In a survey Resilience Force conducted over several months this summer, Soni says more than half of the nonprofit organization’s roughly 2,000 members said they would not travel to Florida to help with hurricane recovery efforts because of the law. And in the aftermath of Hurricane Idalia, he says, many remain concerned. “They felt very fearful,” says Soni, the organization’s executive director. “No amount of money would be worth it if it meant they would be incarcerated or deported.” Normally, Soni says Resilience Force workers wouldn’t think twice before heading to a disaster zone. The group is made up largely of immigrants, many of whom are undocumented, Soni says. And much like migrant workers who follow harvest seasons and travel from farm to farm, they crisscross the US to help clean up and rebuild when disaster strikes. Soni says many of them see the skills they’ve honed over years of responding to major storms as a calling, in addition to a means of supporting their families. “Sadly,” he says, “you have all of these workers sitting in Houston and in New Orleans, coming to our offices, asking us, is there a chance this law will be repealed? Is there any chance they could go?” [ ... ] Soni, Resilience Force’s executive director, says he watched a similar scene unfold a week after the law passed. “I remember being there one afternoon and talking to a worker at lunchtime. … And he, quite literally, while he was talking to me was packing his tools into his pickup truck and leaving with his crew.” It was an early sign, Soni says, of harms caused by the immigration law. “It’s really undermining the ability of Floridians to recover after a hurricane,” he says. “It’s upending the possibility of homes being rebuilt.”

Disaster response workers are not safe in Florida but Ron DeSantis is fine with these Hitler incels who openly paraded in Orlando last weekend.

Neo-Nazi groups spew hate outside Disney World and near Orlando, officials say

Do you really want to "Make America Florida"?

[third-new]

'Our farms will be closed': US farmers upset over Trump's deportation plans

Donald Trump has vowed to carry out the largest domestic deportation crackdown in US history as his second presidential term begins, potentially affecting millions of undocumented immigrants. That could be bad news for America's agricultural industry, which relies heavily on migrant workers. Farmers are warning that this could send prices skyrocketing and cripple the country's food…

[newtras]

'Our farms will be closed': US farmers upset over Trump's deportation plans

Donald Trump has vowed to carry out the largest domestic deportation crackdown in US history as his second presidential term begins, potentially affecting millions of undocumented immigrants. That could be bad news for America's agricultural industry, which relies heavily on migrant workers. Farmers are warning that this could send prices skyrocketing and cripple the country's food…

[newbizz]

'Our farms will be closed': US farmers upset over Trump's deportation plans

Donald Trump has vowed to carry out the largest domestic deportation crackdown in US history as his second presidential term begins, potentially affecting millions of undocumented immigrants. That could be bad news for America's agricultural industry, which relies heavily on migrant workers. Farmers are warning that this could send prices skyrocketing and cripple the country's food…

[indigopari]

from headspace-hotel.tumblr.com/post/740355263548342272/yeah-and-the-widely-held-belief-that-glyphosate

valiantgallus

Jan 23

Yeah one thing I've learned by being in an agriculture school is that most of what's "mainstream" knowledge is false or at the very least very watered down and not presented in a way that makes it easier to understand. Like there's a soil bacterium that's used as a pesticide that only effects caterpillars and west Nile carrying mosquitos and also works as an anticancer in lab settings but people see the big scary pesticide and run away even though you could drink it and be fine.

headspace-hotel

Jan 23

Yeah, and the widely held belief that Glyphosate (Roundup) is uniquely dangerous as a pesticide when the active ingredient is actually significantly safer than most of the other stuff out there. (I say active ingredient because there are inactive ingredients that may actually be more harmful but are less regulated)

Or just...a lot of things about pesticides. Like USA consumers freaking out over the possibility of pesticide residues on their food, and pesticide residues driving all the safety concerns, when there are underpaid and oppressed migrant workers being forced to touch and breathe the stuff all the damn time, probably without proper PPE, because a lot of agricultural laborers in the USA are undocumented and if they complain about unsafe labor practices their boss (You're not a farmer if you just own a farm and don't touch dirt yourself, lol) can squeal on them to ICE.

Like no, one nanogram of roundup having been in the same room of your food isn't going to give you cancer, but inhaling and having skin contact with roundup day in and day out for 30 years just might.

Also I hope you don't use Raid or any kind of bug-killing spray in your house on a regular basis and turn around and complain about pesticides on your food.

Reading in depth about the active ingredients of pesticides and the content of their safety data sheets, how they've been tested, and their rules for handling and using them made me much less afraid of pesticides on food, and much MORE afraid of pesticides in houses.

Like to be completely honest with you, as long as they're not bedbugs or some other kind of parasite, I would prefer to just have the bugs in my house, thanks.

(Predators like spiders and house centipedes are actually helping to STOP actually harmful creatures from moving in to those niches, so there's also that.)

Don't even get me started on GMO's.

Why are agriculture classes the first time I've learned extremely basic info about nutrition and how digestion works. Why isn't this stuff in health textbooks or any easily accessible resource about healthy eating.