Legal News

An investigation by Channel 4 News has found that some migrant workers in the agricultural industry in EU countries are being treated as slaves, living a “shacks” near the fields where they pick fruit and vegetables – and using the bushes as lavatories.

In a report shown on Wednesday (15/04/15), it was revealed that migrant workers are also denied basic hygiene conditions in jobs where they pick vegetables for major UK retailers like Waitrose and Sainsbury’s.

Some of the workers said they were not paid for the hours they worked – and were also sprayed with pesticides and made to live in filthy wooden huts with plastic sheeting for roofs.

The workers are not supplied with soap and water to wash their hands after picking vegetables or going to the lavatory.

Soil can contain bacteria like salmonella and E-coli – and many serious gastric infections are caused by food or drinking water contaminated by human or animal faeces.

In the US in 2013, Glass Onion Catering in California recalled pre-packaged salads and sandwich wraps over fears they might be contaminated with a toxin-producing strain of E.coli 0157:H7.

In 2012, packaged salads produced by Dole were recalled in 15 US states over fears of salmonella contamination.

In the UK, Sainsbury’s recalled bags of watercress, spinach and rocket in 2013, after 19 people fell ill with E.coli 0157.

An investigation was carried out by the Food Standards Agency (FSA), Public Health England and local authorities into the strain of E.coli – VTEC O157 Phage type 2 VT2 – which the FSA said could cause symptoms ranging from “mild gastroenteritis to severe bloody diarrhoea”.

“The most serious complications can lead to blood poisoning and kidney failure,” the FSA advised.

The Channel 4 investigation interviewed migrant workers in Murcia, Spain, who were employed to pick fruit and vegetables for supermarkets in the UK.

Some said they had fallen ill as a result of being exposed to dangerous pesticides on the farms – with “horrific” sinus conditions and bronchitis.

MPs in the UK have demanded an urgent investigation into the conditions the workers are being force to endure to supply British supermarkets with packed salads and fruit and vegetables.

MPs said the evidence collected by Channel 4 was “appalling” – and added that the conditions the workers were living in effectively constituted slave labour producing food in 2015.

One of the workers who picked vegetables told reporters:

“For the toilet you have to go in the bushes. What is there to clean yourself?

“For these courgettes to reach England, there are workers who have suffered a lot.”

Sainsbury’s and Waitrose have said they will investigate the findings of the Channel 4 News report immediately.

In the UK, large numbers of migrants come to work in the agricultural industry, taking low-paid jobs, which they claim British workers will no longer do.

The Modern Slavery Act received Royal Assent in March and is intended to protect workers from being exploited, including being used as bonded slaves or trafficked by gangmasters.

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