October 12, 2021
Chobani and Fair Trade USA recently released a new “fair trade dairy” label that claims to promote worker wellbeing. But farmworker organizers reveal the hidden costs of unfair dairy.
This season, we’re unpacking the real solutions to the dairy industry’s ever-growing crisis and hearing from the farmers, workers, and advocates working to tackle the root causes of unfair dairy.
Dana Geffner: Walk into a grocery store and look at the dairy case. The packaging is covered with idyllic green pastures, rolling hills, a red barn, and black and white cows.
That’s the picture that’s sold to you.
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Dana Geffner: But that’s not reality.
Marita Canedo: At the end of the day, we are just eating some great cheese, having milk, or yogurt thinking it’s fair. But at the end of the day, what we’re eating is just abuses. And one company owning all this without understanding how the people milking the cows are really living.
Dana Geffner: From Fair World Project, I’m Dana Geffner.And this season on For a Better World, we’re delving into the divide between that marketing myth and reality. And we’re doing it by speaking with some of the people on the frontlines. In New York State, farmworkers have been in a years-long struggle for safer workplaces and decent conditions.
Crispin Hernandez: What do we want Chobani to do? Well, we want them to recognize us. We want them to listen to us and we want them to be accountable.
Dana Geffner: But that’s not what they got. On this season of For a Better World, we’re going to be talking to those who have been organizing to build better livelihoods for themselves and their families. The real transformative solutions for a better world.
Marita Canedo: Workers are the leaders of the change. They are the experts, they know what is needed.
Dana Geffner: And we’ll be debunking the false solutions that are trying to rebrand the exploitative status quo of the dairy industry as “ethical.” Join us – new episodes drop every other Tuesday starting October 19th – available free wherever you get your podcasts. For more information and to learn more, visit fairworldproject.org/podcast