Pact of silence (short international version)

In South-East Spain thousands of illegal immigrants work in vegetable greenhouses. They live in slums and are underpaid. Last year the Netherlands imported 450 million euros worth of vegetables from this area. Dutch supermarkets are aware of the situation and cannot guarantee that the Spanish vegetables they sell were sustainably grown. “It is simply impossible to put a supermarket inspector on every grower’s greenhouse”, says a spokesperson for the Dutch Food Retail Association, the supermarket trade association.