A Cyclospora outbreak linked to bagged salads has put fresh produce company Taylor Farms at the center of a food safety scandal in the US. But the parasite isn’t the only thing hiding in their supply chain. As attention turned to the company, reports linking it to Arizona’s prison labor system resurfaced, exposing another issue behind the food supply: the exploitation of incarcerated workers.
A 2023 investigation found that Taylor Farms contracted labor through Arizona Correctional Industries, the state’s for-profit prison labor program. The company reportedly paid about $4.75 an hour to the correctional system, while incarcerated workers saw no more than $1.50 of it.
Taylor Farms is one of the largest fresh produce companies in the US. And they’re not alone. Hickman’s Egg Farms, NatureSweet, and Televerde had the same arrangement through Arizona Correctional Industries.
The findings grow more troubling from there.
Futurism reports:
Worse yet, some of those incarcerated workers may have been here as non-citizens—meaning it would be illegal to employ them in the same low-wage jobs if they weren’t being held in detention. As Prison Legal noted at the time, at least 26 prisoners employed by these companies had been detained by ICE, meaning that outside of incarceration, hiring them would have been illegal. To put it bluntly: their status as prisoners was the only thing that made the arrangement legal.
The Arizona Department of Correction, Rehabilitation, and Reentry (DCRR) said it had hired out 15,700 “Mexican nationals” between 2008 and 2023, although it could not say how many were undocumented immigrants.
