
Working in a Prison Goat Milk Farm - happy-go-lucky
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/07/20/538062911/whats-it-really-like-to-work-in-a-prison-goat-milk-farm-we-asked-inmates
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Lazare
Prison labour is deeply problematic for ethical reasons, but I think a lot of
commentators here are misunderstanding the economics of it.

Haystack Mountain is not getting subsidised milk; they're paying market rates.
The dairy is a profit centre for the prison (which in this case is government
operated), used to defray operational costs. The prisoner's get paid a
pittance, but that helps out the prison; not Haystack (or the grocery stores
or eventual consumers). Nobody in the production chain is going to give their
output away below market rate just because they got cheap inputs.

Similarly, people suggesting that the competition is putting other dairies out
of business are off the mark, because again, the prison dairy is selling their
product at market rates. And in this particular case, the prison dairy was set
up _after_ Haystack Mountain's supplier closed, threatening to force them out
of business; they didn't close in response to the prison dairy closing.

The deeply troubling issue described in the article is _forced labour_ , where
the government can throw you in prison and then force you to work for
(basically) free. _Cheap cheese_ (or goat milk) is 1) not an ethical issue and
2) not actually happening.

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freeflight
Imho it's not as simple as that, the article has a paragraph who puts it in
some perspective:

"Nobody wants to have a big goat dairy, so we did it," Joey Grisenti says.
This farm, with its guaranteed supply of low-cost workers, can survive when
other farms cannot. "A lot of people just can't afford to have the manpower
that we have here," he says.".

What does this say? That goat diaries seem to be an unprofitable business
unless you've got a "guaranteed supply of low-cost workers". So either goat
milk products are being sold too cheap or the process of goat milking needs to
be made less labor intensive.

Whatever the solution might be, one thing is for certain: These "guaranteed
low-cost workers" sure as hell ain't gonna make it easier for any private
competition to join the market, at least if said competition wants to pay
their labor fair living wages and still stay competitive.

Then there's also the fact that plenty of countries around the world manage to
produce goat milk just fine, without having to employ prison labor, among
them, even developed EU countries like France, Spain, Greece or the
Netherlands. Countries with way higher labor costs compared to the US, yet
there seems to be no shortage of goat milk there?

~~~
morley
The other side of this coin is that, for these "low-cost workers," the goat
farm gig is probably better than their alternatives.

> Workers on this farm get strip-searched. If they're caught with drugs or
> tobacco, or get in fights, they could lose this job and be sent to a higher-
> security facility with a lot less freedom. > > And then there's the pay. It
> varies, depending on the job, but most inmates on the farm earn a few
> dollars a day. That's better than most prison jobs, which typically pay less
> than a dollar a day, but still, it's cut-rate labor.

Should that opportunity cost to the prisoners in this program have weight in
whether this "cut-rate labor" is ethical or not? If the farm can't sell it's
goat milk for ethical reasons and the prisoners wind up in lower-paying or
worse jobs, was Whole Foods' righteous action actually ethical? Lots of
complex questions here. I don't know the answers here, but it's a little
annoying that one letter to Whole Foods taking the moral high ground could
handwave so much nuance.

~~~
QAPereo
>The other side of this coin is that, for these "low-cost workers," the goat
farm gig is probably better than their alternatives.

When you're talking about people who are in prison, "alternatives" can be
actual torture. I'd rather work in a stinking pit than be locked in a tiny
room 23.5 hours a day, and that last thing is always an "alternative" in
prison.

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qq66
The biggest harm from these prison labor businesses is not to the prisoners
(who, in the article, say it's better than their alternative), but to the
other dairies out there who have to compete with businesses employing
Thirteenth Amendment slave labor. As the article points out, non-prison
dairies have a tough time staying in business, due in likely no small part to
a taxpayer subsidized competitor who doesn't really have to pay their staff.

~~~
ajnin
Interesting world we live in, where slave labour is considered a smaller issue
than a company's lost profits.

~~~
GhostVII
The prisoners all said they liked working much more than they liked being in
prison, so so wouldn't really call it "slave labour"

And even if they didn't like it, how is forcing them to do some work any worse
than forcing them to be in prison? In both cases you are forcing them to do
something they don't want to do.

~~~
nkrisc
Create laws that criminalize trivial and victimless actions -> Sentence them
to prison -> provide cheap labor as an alternative -> prisoners like cheap
labor better than prison conditions -> achieve moral high ground? Nope.

~~~
GhostVII
Aside from the 'Create laws that criminalize trivial and victimless actions',
I see nothing wrong with that, you are only making the prisoners happier
during their time in prison. Prison is partially about punishment anyways, so
really you are effectively reducing their sentence. Also I really doubt that
the government is profiting off these prisoners, it costs a lot to keep
someone in prison.

~~~
nkrisc
It's not the government that's profiting, it's the private prison companies
that lobby the government to keep themselves in business and for a steady
supply of prisoners from the enforcement of the aforementioned victimless
crimes that land people in the prisons they own.

~~~
GhostVII
The prison in the article is run by the government

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kbart
_" Michael Allen, the activist who got Whole Foods to stop selling Haystack
Mountain's goat cheese, says he understands why prisoners like having those
jobs. But he'll keep fighting against prison labor until the workers get paid
better."_

I don't follow such logic. Inmates get free shelter, free food, free
healthcare (well, taxpayers pay for it, but that's another topic), so it's
only fair that they make up some of it by providing labor imho. Do such
activists honestly propose paying them market rates? How about people living
on minimum wage then that get to pay for everything themselves? Also, many
people go to prison without any job experience, providing them with some
increase their chances of reintegration to society. And just look at the place
of that farm (pictured in the article), I myself would accept some wage cut to
work in a place with such view.

~~~
mtgx
You're conflating multiple issues.

1) Just because you're in prison, doesn't mean you deserve to be treated like
a work animal. Some people are in there for serial murders, while the vast
majority are there for theft, tax fraud, smoking marijuana, etc - maybe even
for "resisting arrest".

2) Even if what you said made "economic sense", while disregarding any human
rights the prisoners might have, the problem is that many (or most?) of the
prisoners are now in private prisons. That means those prisons get _both_ the
taxpayer money _and_ the free labor. So both the taxpayers and the prisoners
lose, while the private prisons score a double-win. Do you think that's how it
should work, too?

~~~
icebraining
_the problem is that many (or most?) of the prisoners are now in private
prisons_

It's actually around 8%: [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/11/u-s-
private-...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/11/u-s-private-
prison-population-has-declined-in-recent-years/)

------
antman
"In the years after Haystack Mountain started making cheese, one of the
company's biggest problems was finding a reliable source of goat milk. Jim
Schott's small farm couldn't produce enough on its own, and every outside
supplier eventually went out of business."

Any competitor will get out of business if you have to pay your forced labor
only 1$ a day.

~~~
_Marak_
That's not how the timeline of the article reads. The prison was the last
resort after the other suppliers went out of business.

From the article, it says they were weeks away from no cheese at all. The
prison specifically stepped up the market demand. They didn't push other's out
of the market.

Haystack is paying market price for the milk. They are paying full value for
the milk and they aren't paying the labor costs of the prisoners. They are
buying milk.

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tacostakohashi
An interesting lesson about authenticity and transparency here.

The problem here isn't so much that the prison labor is inherently unethical
(it may or may not be), but when people buy cheese at Whole Foods, they assume
it's being made by happy people living their dream on a farm they own.

When that turns out not to be true, it's a problem. If you find out about it
from an activist and not from the supplier themselves, that makes it worse.

Seems like Haystack could use this as part of their marketing story - put a
note on the cheese about it, about how they are providing meaningful work for
prisoners, it's better than working inside in a factory, it gives them skills
for when they get out.

~~~
PixelB
>>it's better than working inside in a factory, it gives them skills for when
they get out.

That argument starts to fall apart when you think about it: The skills they
are gaining are only applicable to an industry that is unsustainable outside
of slave labor.

Luckily, most people don't think about it and just take what they read at face
value.

~~~
icebraining
Would you say that if you were to switch industries right now, none of what
you've experienced in your working life would be useful in your new
profession?

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o-
"It's a great thing," Pate tells me. "It beats the alternative. Rather than
sitting in your tiny little cell, you get to come out here."

Completely voluntary to work there though, of course.

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alistproducer2
I recommend that everyone watch the Netflix documentary "13th." The central
theme is that slavery has never stopped being legal in the United States it
just moved to the prison system. Below is the text of that amendment.

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment
for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within
the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

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gwern
[https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-
eth...](https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/)

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weberc2
This is probably a native question, but couldn't the ethical qualms be largely
resolved by making labor voluntary (if it isn't already).

~~~
fenwick67
There are still some complex factors at work with making it optional.

For example, you are probably more likely to get parole if you perform labor.

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weberc2
That doesn't seem too complex. Just make sure the parole board doesn't have
conflicts of interest.

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bowlingx
Interesting article...I think the real inmates are the goats here.

