For over a decade, Kroger and Publix, two of the largest grocery chains in the United States, have refused to join the Presidential Medal-winning Fair Food Program, insisting — year after year, trafficking case after trafficking case — that their current vendor codes of conduct and occasional audits are sufficient to prevent the risk of extreme human rights abuses in their respective supply chains.

Meanwhile, just weeks ago, farmworkers in North Carolina filed a class action lawsuit against their employer, alleging a series of extraordinary human rights violations, including wage theft, threats, confiscation of passports, predatory recruitment fees, and the failure to provide bathrooms, drinking water, or care when workers suffered debilitating heat stress. The lawsuit was filed under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1581 et seq. (TVPRA), and the North Carolina Human Trafficking Law, N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-43.18 et seq.

Following the publication of the lawsuit, and using publicly available information, the CIW has found that Kroger and Publix buy produce from the company where the plaintiffs in the lawsuit say that they worked, Jackson Farming Company.

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Kroger, through its regional subsidiary Harris Teeter, has itself stated that customers looking to buy produce from Jackson Farming Company can find it on their shelves today...

Further, a North Carolina Department of Agriculture post from 2020 profiles Jackson Farming Company and states that consumers can find their crops in Harris Teeter and Publix. Because the civil suit’s time span includes those farmworkers with Jackson Farming Company during the 2020 harvest season up until 2025, there is a risk that crops harvested under conditions of extreme abuse have, for at least half a decade, been bought by both Kroger and Publix, and sold to unsuspecting customers.

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