There’s a good chance that the last egg you ate was produced by trafficked human labor, possibly involving workers who are underage.
Take Trillium Farms in Marion County, Ohio, which describes itself on its website as “one of the nation’s leading egg producers,” with a flock that produces “millions of safe, wholesome eggs each day.”
Federal authorities say that between 2011 and 2014, Trillium held contracts with a company that supplied workers who were mostly underage — some as young as 14 — to clean the company’s chicken coops, load and unload crates of chickens, and perform the grueling work of debeaking and vaccinating chickens.
The workers originated from Guatemala and were coerced by violence to travel to Ohio. Once settled, they lived in decrepit trailers and were forced over many years to work 12-hour days of harsh manual labor, according to federal court documents. As part of a conspiracy with the traffickers, the victims were isolated in every respect. Not only were they prevented from interacting with people outside their living quarters, but they also were forced to surrender their paychecks.