ProPublica traced one blueberry brand to a labor-trafficking case contractor

Over the course of reporting, ProPublica followed a question that should be simple and wasn’t: do the blueberries you buy come from farms where workers were harmed? In this series, a reporter did the digging and was able to trace a specific blueberry brand’s berries back from grocery shelves to an individual farm tied to a labor contractor whose case was part of one of America’s largest labor trafficking prosecutions. The contractor, Javier Sanchez Mendoza, was charged in a federal indictment and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in forced labor after footage from a 2018 blueberry farm surfaced in the public record.

That’s the core problem. There is no easy, direct way for shoppers to verify where their blueberries came from, down to the farm, and federal regulators do not require blueberry brands to disclose that farm-level information on packaging. In other words, the “where” that matters for labor risk is usually hidden behind “the state where the berries are grown” or “the city they’re distributed from.” And even those clues can be misleading: a single brand’s pints are not always sourced from one farm. Brands buy berries from a whole bunch of farms, then sell them under one label, which makes it much harder to connect labor harms to what ends up in your fridge.

So what did the reporter do when the labels wouldn’t cooperate? They started at the point of sale, snapping photos of pints, researching brands, and reading government records. Through that process, they found that the brand they traced did buy berries from a farm that had hired a labor contractor. That contractor’s involvement connected the berries to abuses described in the labor trafficking prosecution ProPublica reported on in depth. The allegation and evidence in that case centered on thousands of foreign farmworkers who were illegally charged fees by labor contractors to work in the U.S., including prosecutors describing forced picking for little to no pay as a form of modern-day slavery.

This isn’t a one-off, and the series leans hard on why it keeps repeating. Labor contractors exist because farmers often struggle to find workers in the U.S., especially when many speak only English. Hiring contractors to bring foreign laborers and oversee work can outsource responsibility, sometimes shielding farmers from awareness of, or accountability for, harm against workers. ProPublica also emphasizes that labor regulators have repeatedly failed to ensure that contractors do what the government requires, including keeping workers safe and paying them what they’re promised. If enforcement is spotty and oversight is structurally complex, the supply chain can function like a fog machine, even when the outcomes are not abstract at all.

One question that hangs over the entire story is: if disclosure is missing, what can consumers and corporate buyers do instead? ProPublica spoke with experts studying farm labor conditions and food supply chains, and they pointed to the Fair Food Program as the “gold standard” approach. The idea is simple: supermarkets and other corporate buyers commit to paying a little more for produce, described as a negligible cost by one expert, at a few pennies per pound. For those pennies, grocers get crops from farms offering stronger protections for workers. Fruits and vegetables from participating farms are labeled with a green sticker of a woman holding a basket of tomatoes, which gives consumers a clear signal.

The program has measurable credibility in the series. ProPublica notes that dozens of farms have signed on to the Fair Food Program, and participation has been shown to prevent abuse in the fields. Pacific Tomato Growers is named as one of a few dozen farms participating, with the sticker used in-store. But the catch is that participation among blueberry farms appears limited. The reporter writes that only a few small blueberry farms participate in the program. Until that changes, the series argues, consumers will know virtually nothing about the farms their blueberries come from, and they cannot make choices that could shift outcomes for the people picking the fruit.

This is where decision-makers should feel the friction. If brands and retailers refuse to provide farm-level information and do not broadly adopt stronger standards, then risk management becomes guesswork. ProPublica reached out to more than 75 blueberry brands, grocery stores, fast-food chains, farmers, trade groups, and labor contractors. Only one brand responded. Dole, in a statement, said it requires contract farmers to comply with labor laws to protect “worker welfare,” and it added it can trace berries back to the farms where they came from but has not made that information available to consumers. ProPublica also asked more than 30 of America’s largest grocery and fast-food chains why they haven’t joined the Fair Food Program or expanded their limited participation; none answered. Trade groups largely declined to talk, and some opposed regulator efforts to enact protections like those required by the program, arguing the changes would “burden the whole industry for a few bad apples.”

The second-order implication is brutal for boards and operating leaders: when labor harms hide behind aggregation, labels become marketing cover rather than control points, and procurement can fail to detect what enforcement misses. For executives in food, retail, and branded consumer goods, this is a supply chain transparency problem, not only a human rights problem. If your category cannot reliably answer “which farm, which contractor, which protections,” then every risk dashboard is built on partial visibility. The ProPublica reporter’s months of label reading and record digging shows how hard it can be for a consumer to find the truth, which should be a warning signal for any company that claims it can manage labor risk end-to-end.