DOES PRISON LABOR SUSTAIN THE GARLIC INDUSTRY?

Garlic started coming into fashion in America in the late 1970s, and by the 1990s famous cooks were promoting its use in their cookbooks and on their TV shows. Today the world produces more than 30 million tons of garlic each year, and the desire for it is rising. Some 80% of it comes from China, which produces garlic more cheaply than anywhere else in the world and has a reputation for dumping it on other nations’ markets to undercut domestic industries. That is particularly true of Chinese peeled garlic, which is sold in the United States at prices U.S. companies can’t match. One American importer wanted to know why, so he traveled to China where he smuggled a camera into a prison and photographed the inmates peeling garlic, sometimes more than 40 pounds each in a single day. His film ultimately found its way into a Netflix documentary series called Rotten, which focuses on corruption in the global food industry, and it also triggered a lawsuit by garlic companies claiming the undercover video was fake. The lawsuit was dismissed in September 2020 by a district court in California, marking a small victory for American garlic growers in their ongoing dispute with China.