It turns out that Taylor Farms, the agricultural company widely believed to be behind the cyclospora outbreak currently raging throughout the US, is also heavily involved in modern-day forced labor.
In reporting from 2023 that was resurfaced this week on social media, the publication Prison Legal News revealed that Taylor Farms was contracting labor from the Arizona Department of Correction, Rehabilitation, and Reentry for the low, low price of just $4.75 an hour — far below the cost of a non-incarcerated worker the federal minimum wage. (And to be clear, that’s not the hourly wage paid to the inmate, which is capped at $1.50 in Arizona.)
Yeah but that’s not gonna cause outbreaks at this level. This is clearly a systemic failure regarding food safety, sanitation, and general oversight throughout Taylor Farms operations. This isn’t because somebody shat in a field. Like, that’s not what caused anything, it’s just fox news racism.
The parasite in question spreads through excrements. But i agree that to reach this scale, there must be multiple issues; a single sick worker can’t cause this if there are protocols in place to prevent this. Maybe there was an large-scale outbreak in their workforce that everyone ignored. Maybe machines processing the produce weren’t cleaned after an incident. In the end, someone there was very sick, and management ignored it.