By April 2016, major U.S. grocer Whole Foods Market will no longer source food from companies that utilize prison-work programs in their production process.
This includes Colorado-based company Quixotic Farming, which has partnered with the Colorado Correctional Industries (CCI) to farm its tilapia product. Located directly within the CCI paradigm, the company’s flagship facility works with paid inmates to produce tilapia that is free of hormones and antibiotics. According to Quixotic, their fish farm program also helps inmates in their rehabilitation and serves to “teach them valuable skills that they can use upon their release to gain employment.”
“We appreciate the inmates who work hard to help raise our fish in Colorado, and if they excel and are interested in continuing the work once they are released, we try to help those inmates with job placements either at our facilities outside of CCI or in other seafood industry jobs. We believe in teaching a man to fish and giving him a second chance,” Quixotic said of the CCI inmates it works with.
Whole Foods has faced criticism as of late for selling products from Quixotic Farming and Haystack Mountain Goat Diary, which also works with CCI and CCI inmates to facilitate the creation of its dairy products. A protest conducted by the End Mass Incarceration Houston organization argued that the grocer was guilty of exploitation by selling said products seeing as inmates are usually paid less, reported NPR's The Salt.
"People are incarcerated and then forced to work for pennies on the dollar — compare that to what the products are sold for," said End Mass Incarceration Houston founder Michael Allen to The Salt.
"We felt that supporting supplier partners who found a way to be part of paid, rehabilitative work being done by inmates would help people get back on their feet," wrote Whole Food's spokesperson Michael Silverman in a reply email to The Salt.
However, "we have heard from some shoppers and members of the community that they were uncomfortable with Whole Foods Market's sourcing products produced with inmate labor," added Silverman. Thus, Whole Foods has decided to step “in-line” with its customers’ mentality and discontinue selling products from Quixotic Farming and Haystack Mountain Goat Diary by spring of next year.
The primary aim of Colorado Correctional Industries – which employs some 1,600 inmates – is “to provide inmates with employment and training” as a means to help them find employment opportunities once they are released, noted NPR. "This is a model example of a prison-work program," Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy's John Scaggs told NPR regarding why the processor has chosen to partner with CCI. "By purchasing goat's milk from the facility [that uses prison labor], we're supporting ... rehabilitative incarceration."
