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1. Which is the most socially just: a Chiquita, a Dole or a Del Monte banana?
Sometimes a banana is just a banana, but sometimes it's a symbol of the downside of globalization. A growing proportion of bananas are produced by workers who lack health care or wages high enough to feed their families, and who are exposed to pesticides, says Stephen Coates, executive director of the US/Labor Education in the Americas Project (www.usleap.org).
In June, Chiquita, the largest producer of bananas in the world, signed a contract with its unions to respect workers' rights. "Neither Dole nor Del Monte has discussed these issues with Colsiba," the Latin American Coordinating Committee of Banana Workers' Unions, says Coates. The contract was the result of a two-year campaign and was a "very significant breakthrough," he adds.
According to "Bananas: An American History" by Virginia Scott Jenkins (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), we eat 75 bananas per person each year, more than any other fruit. The major U.S. banana-importing companies were among the first multinational corporations.
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