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posted by martyb on Friday July 21 2017, @01:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the say-"cheese!" dept.

NPR visits a prison goat farm that was the subject of an activist's ire back in 2015:

Whole Foods loved [Jim Schott's] cheese. His company [Haystack Mountain] grew. It also changed. Ten years ago, Haystack Mountain started buying milk from a farm in a prison. Schott doesn't recall telling Whole Foods or his other customers about that change in the Haystack Mountain story. In any case, Schott felt that it was a good thing — "a model of good prison management."

Then, in 2015, a prison reform activist named Michael Allen sent a letter to John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods. Allen demanded that Whole Foods stop selling Haystack Mountain's cheese because it was made, in part, using the labor of prisoners earning pennies per hour. The way Allen sees it, Haystack was "taking advantage of helpless, powerless individuals. They're fair game for corporations to make money off of. And I just told [Mackey] that we wanted him to get out of that business."

Many things besides cheese are made in prisons. Across the country, tens of thousands of inmates work for businesses that have set up operations inside prison walls. They make flags and furniture. Most of the time, they attract little attention. People may feel differently about something they eat, though, especially a boutique food like goat cheese. To Allen's amazement and delight, Whole Food caved to his demands. In a statement, the company said that some of its customers weren't comfortable with products made by prisoners, so it would no longer sell them.

The inmates are still milking those goats, though. I was curious about this farm, and set up a visit.


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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday July 21 2017, @02:47PM (1 child)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 21 2017, @02:47PM (#542381) Journal

    For-profit prisons also have perverse incentives. But the evil of for-profit prisons seems to be getting some attention. So finding ways to exploit prisoners in state run prisons simply obeys the law of conservation of evil.

    For profit prisons: getting the state to fill vacant cells increases revenue, and profits, and executive bonuses and enhanced shareholder value. Everyone happy.

    State run prison labor camps: getting and retaining good help is hard, but it increases revenue, and profits, higher prison warden and staff salaries and benefits, fewer tax dollars spent. Everyone happy.

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    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
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  • (Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:12AM

    by fakefuck39 (6620) on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:12AM (#542775)

    yeah, those prison shareholder judges and jurors who give out harsh punishment in court to people arrested by police, then give prisoners highly skilled jobs that rake in the 300k in revenue that generates the 170k in profit, which after the 168k/inmate/year prison cost (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/nyregion/citys-annual-cost-per-inmate-is-nearly-168000-study-says.html) generates them 2k/year in ???profit!!!

    you're just a special kind of special... good boy - tied those velcro shoes all by yourself. wash you hands after poopy. don't forget now.