Sugar.. How sweet it is???

[Wild Bill Kelso]

I watched a documentary tonight ont he sugar industry in the Dominican republic and the Unioted states. I was shocked to discover that the initiative fro the anti-slavery movement originated out of the sugar industry. Plantation owners in ther cruelty motivated the first activists to statr the fight against slavery. Eventually they won and slavery was abololished in the U.K. However, there is a new form of slavery present on many of todays sugar planations in the Dominican republic:

link 1


Lnk 2

NGOs and Catholic priests reported corruption among the military, migration authorities, and other border officials and noted that these government representatives sometimes allowed illegal Haitian workers into the country. For example, one Catholic priest alleged that members of the armed forces along the border allowed more than 20,000 workers to cross the border each harvest season to be "sold" to sugar cane companies at $20 (1,000 pesos) per person.

(use the word sugar to find more relevant quotes)

Though now, the slaves to sugar are not only the cutters. Obesity is endemic in todays world; forthe first time in history there are more obese people than starving people. The WHO has tried to fight this new world epidemic but the sugar industry has used its muscle to intervene:

Guardian link


After the program I went to look at many of the products in my household. Sure enough I found sugar in almost everything, even things that don't really need it. I even found it in some of the spaghetti sauces in my cupboard. Now of course we need sugar, but why do comapnies think we we need it in everything we eat???





UPDATE: I found this like from the BBC looks like there may be hope yet:
BBC link

[TheKwas]

I saw the same program I think ("Big Sugar" right?), and although I do think it was very well made, they did tend to try to make the issue more sensative by comparing it to slavery at every moment they could.

But Big Sugar industry is a good example of how corperations have power over "democratic" governments and tend to muddle public opinion by bringing up counter "scientific" views so that the average citizen doesn't know what to think. They did it with smoking, and now their doing it with gas emissions and Big surgar.

[Wild Bill Kelso]

Well I think at some points to comparison to slavery is valid. Look at the conditions of the cane cutters. I mean the one guy had to cut a ton of sugar cane by hand just to buy what looke dlike a days worth of food for his family. They wouldn't even let the cutter supplement thier income by allowing them to grow vegetables for home consumption.

[stop-3]

We rich westerners (even those of us (myself included) classed as 'poor' are rich) live off the backs of BILLIONS of people who slave away for what would be for us nothing, whilst we nonchalanty drive or stroll to the supermarket and buy to our hearts content food from all over the world - or even worse buy trivial things for our vanity. Then we go home and watch telly and comfort ourselves how wonderful we are.
Seems to me that things are worse considering the scale of it.