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Did you know that every year, humans consume 50 billion pounds of garlic? Funny, because I was pretty sure that’s what I consumed alone. Man, I love garlic. It’s a staple ingredient in my household. We love flavoring our foods with it, plus it helps lower cholesterol levels, regulates blood pressure and blood sugar levels. Added bonus: I told my kids it keeps the vampires at bay. As a result, my four-year-old requests garlic bread on a fairly regular basis. Look for my future blog on other tricks that keep spooky things away.
I was looking forward to learning more about this spicy bulb in the next installment of Netflix’ “Rotten” series. The documentary introduces garlic as the sexiest ingredient in almost all cuisines these days. It really started coming into fashion in the late 1970’s. By the 90’s, more and more celebrity chefs were using it as a key ingredient in their recipes. And today, garlic generates $40 billion in global revenues a year. You’d think it’s a very good time to be in the garlic business. Or is it?
This episode doesn’t necessarily focus on the quality of the product we’re eating very much, which was disappointing. More than anything else, it exposes the inner workings of the garlic industry, suggesting it operates like a cartel. You learn that China grows 90 percent of the garlic eaten around the world. It’s the lowest cost producer of garlic, and unfortunately, the documentary says cheap Chinese garlic being imported into the United States has raised the issue of “dumping”: selling a foreign product while undercutting the domestic industry.
To control “dumping,” the Department of Commerce conducts yearly reviews of Chinese garlic importers and producers. The companies found to be dumping are slapped with a steep dumping tax, which helps even the playing field for domestic garlic producers. “Rotten” draws attention to what could be a gaping loophole in that process, though. Year after year, the largest Chinese garlic exporter has somehow avoided paying the dumping tax. And that’s where this episode turns into somewhat of a complex, “he said, she said” story.
You meet lawyer Ted Hume, who specializes in international trade and represents a number of small Chinese garlic producers. He claims that “Harmoni International Spice Inc.” is in cahoots with the USA’s largest wholesaler and distributor of garlic, “Christopher Ranch.” That company also happens to be the largest member off of the “Fresh Garlic Producer’s Association,” a body formed to protect the interests of American producers against increasing imports from China. You learn that when the Department of Commerce conducts its yearly reviews of Chinese garlic companies, it looks to members of the U.S. garlic industry to decide which companies make the list. And every year, the FGPA has removed “Harmoni” from the review list.
Hume alleges “Christopher Ranch” doesn’t want “Harmoni” reviewed because it’s the biggest buyer of its garlic. Essentially, he says “Christopher Ranch” buys the super cheap Chinese garlic from “Harmoni,” then sells it across the U.S. for an enormous profit. Apparently, that’s not illegal, but it does cost American jobs and hurts the bottom line of other Chinese garlic companies. Hume says he wanted to prevent “Harmoni” and “Christopher Ranch” from taking over the entire garlic industry. To do that, he recruited a couple of garlic producers in New Mexico to file an official request with the Department of Commerce to have them reviewed.
Are you following? I admit; it’s complicated.
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Supply chains: the dirty secret of China’s prisons
The export of products made inside jails is illegal, yet some items are still turning up in goods sold overseas
At dawn the gates to the detention centre open. A truck laden with several tonnes of freshly dug garlic bulbs enters, and disappears into the vast complex, which houses both prisoners and people awaiting trial. For three hours, there is no movement apart from the Chinese police practising their morning drills. Then the same truck emerges from the complex, its load replaced with cloves of peeled garlic. It drives for two hours to a depot in the central-eastern town of Jinxiang — the world’s garlic capital — which packages peeled garlic for export to India, according to a worker inside the facility. Prison labour is common in China, where the law states that prisoners able to work must do so — a system known as “reform through labour”. China is home to around 2.3m prisoners and pre-trial detainees, according to the Institute for Criminal Policy Research, giving it the world’s second-largest prison population after the US. Exporting prison-produced goods is illegal under domestic and international trade laws.
Yet evidence of prison labour is present in many of China’s supply chains, from handbags to washing machines, according to experts and ex-prisoners. “Most of the companies set up under prison provincial administration bureaus in China look, from the outside, like ordinary companies,” says Joshua Rosenzweig of Amnesty International in Hong Kong. “Foreign corporations are in a pretty tough position to do the kind of due diligence that would be needed to identify whether their supply chains are connected to prison labour.” Forced labour is not a new phenomenon in the country, but it is becoming more prevalent as a result of higher wages in China and the decline in the working-age population. Manufacturers are under increasing pressure to stay competitive with Bangladesh and Vietnam. Li Qiang, head of the activist organisation China Labor Watch, says that suppliers to US retailers have told him about redirecting some of their orders to prisons in a bid to cut costs after renewed pressure on prices. “We have seen companies exploiting prison labour as a way of keeping costs low,” says Kenneth Kennedy, senior policy adviser on forced labour at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A spokesperson for Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer, which uses Chinese suppliers says: “We regularly assess factories and have systems in place to investigate complaints.”
Most of the companies set up under prison provincial administration bureaus in China look …like ordinary companies Joshua Rosenzweig Some manufacturers are also under pressure because local governments have started to enforce labour laws that restrict flexible hiring. This has led some subcontractors to cut corners for foreign clients, who do not always have the ability to scrutinise supply chains. “Illegal subcontracting appears to have increased as a result of the government cracking down on the use of contract workers from 2012,” says Lesli Ligorner, partner at legal firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in Shanghai. “When companies had rush orders or a lack of labour, they appear to have decided they would rather violate their supplier contract, and farm out the work to another company, than risk breaking the labour laws and be caught out by local government.” Companies who use forced labour reduce their wage costs to the level of paying off the prison or detention centre which keeps most, if not all, of the payment for the work, leaving workers very little, according to labour rights advocates and ex-convicts. In the words of the owner of a small garlic company in Jinxiang: “It means working for nothing.”
Inside a detention centre in Peixian town, 90km south of Jinxiang, detainees work on a fresh shipment of garlic bulbs, according to surveillance footage acquired by a local garlic businessman, Xu Mingju, and seen by the Financial Times. Some of the prisoners are awaiting trial. Others have been convicted and will be transferred to prisons where ex-convicts say labour conditions are better, as they are more closely regulated than detention centres. Former prisoners say the pungent acids in the garlic can melt detainees’ fingernails, exposing stinging flesh. Those who can no longer use their hands bite off the garlic skins with their teeth.
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The terrifying secrets behind your favorite foods
Garlic
Much of the garlic Americans consume used to be grown in California. Now, the vast majority comes from China. The Asian country produces some 90 percent of the world’s garlic.
China grows so much garlic, so cheaply, that America slaps imports with a tariff to keep it competitive with homegrown products. But at least one company has found a way to skirt the tariff, flooding American stores with low-priced bulbs.
“I think it would be fair to say it’s less regulated in China,” Haughney says. “The concern is that it could be contaminated.”
Chinese garlic is reportedly bleached and could be polluted with heavy metals.
There’s another concern, as well. As “Rotten” demonstrates, much of the pre-peeled fresh garlic that ends up in stores is processed by Chinese prisoners, which would make its importation illegal under US law.
The job is so grueling that prisoners fingernails fall off, leading them to peel the garlic with their teeth.
“I avoid peeled garlic,” Haughney says. She also recommends buying locally grown or at least bulbs from California.
https://nypost.com/2018/01/16/the-terrifying-secrets-behind-your-favorite-foods/
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Garlic Giant Disputes Netflix Series Alleging Prison Labor
Friday January 12, 2018
Garlic Giant Disputes Netflix Series Alleging Prison Labor
A California garlic company is threatening to sue after Netflix broadcast a series that alleges the company sells garlic manufactured with Chinese prison labor. Ken Christopher, a farmer from Christopher Ranch, says that “We felt like our reputation has been dragged completely through the mud for the sake of entertainment.”
The Mercury News recounts the controversial episode, titled “Garlic Breath” in the series “Rotten.”
In the episode, a lawyer for some Chinese exporters recruits a couple of small New Mexico growers to complain to U.S. regulators about Southern California importer Harmoni International Spice and Christopher Ranch, described as one of Harmoni’s biggest buyers.
The complaint accuses Harmoni of colluding with Christopher Ranch to block regulatory reviews of Harmoni’s Chinese imports while slapping competing Chinese imports with pricey duties aimed at protecting U.S. growers from foreign “dumping” of under-priced product.
Joining the New Mexico growers in the complaint was a Chinese garlic wholesaler who videotaped what he said was Chinese prisoners being forced to peel garlic for U.S. consumers with their teeth because their fingernails were so worn. The video showed that garlic being loaded into boxes with labels he said was for Harmoni and Golden King, which he claimed was a Christopher Ranch trademark.
Notably, the episode noted that the U.S. Department of Commerce ruled in Harmoni’s favor on the complaint, and that a judge found the wholesaler’s video insufficient to warrant blocking Harmoni’s shipments.
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Did the US-China trade war start with a court case about Chinese garlic?
- Exporter Xu Mingju accused of flouting US anti-dumping duties having initially lost his job as a professor of sociology in the wake of the 9/11 attacks
- He took undercover footage of prisoners peeling garlic in Jinxiang, and handed the footage to the makers of the Netflix documentary series, ‘Rotten’
A Chinese immigrant to the United States has become a key player in a trade dispute that is pitting industry powerhouses in his native China and the US against small farmers trying to make a living out of growing garlic.
When Xu Mingju moved to the US in 1999 he was hoping to carve out a career in medical research. Instead, 20 years later, he has become involved in complex international litigation which has seen him accused of racketeering – a charge usually reserved for mobsters.
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