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How to pronounce sea louse in English?

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Do some research into how some foods are grown and harvested, and you'll find terrible things.
We're not just talking about crops that aren't environmentally friendly, but also crops that
are harvested by slaves, that make entire communities sick, and some that are the product
of animal cruelty.
In 2018, a consortium of agencies that included Oxfam and the International Labor Rights Forum
released their Cocoa Barometer.
It's a measure of the state of the cocoa industry on an agricultural level, and it's dismal
stuff.
Not only did falling cocoa prices mean farmers living in poverty saw their profits drop even
lower, but there had been little to no success in stopping the widespread use of child labor.
They estimated more than 2 million children were working on cocoa plantations in West
Africa alone, and that's staggering.
Here are some other numbers.
According to one report, the living wage in the Ivory Coast is $2.51 per day, but cocoa
farmers can expect to make around 78 cents.
That's where the necessity of child labor comes in, and it's a heartbreaking situation
for everyone involved.
While some chocolate companies, like Tony's, have completely eliminated child labor in
their productions lines, others, like Nestle, are still working on it.
Nestle implemented the Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation System, in which they're asking
farmers to declare the child labor they're using so the community can help stop it.
Is that really enough?
Vanilla is one of the world's most popular flavors, and the good stuff comes from Madagascar.
Real vanilla pods cost a surprising amount of money and sadly, according to the research
center Danwatch, the people growing and harvesting the vanilla aren't actually seeing much of
the profits at all.
They see so little of those profits, in fact, that most of the vanilla-growing communities
in the Sava region of Madagascar live in terrible poverty, and still rely on child labor to
do a lot of the work.
The weeks leading up to the harvest are often filled with starvation and uncertainty, with
many families forced to take out loans, with astronomical interest, from the "collectors"
who ultimately buy their harvests at a fraction of what it's worth on the global market.
The International Labor Organization estimates there's about 20,000 children employed in
the vanilla trade as of 2016.
Bananas aren't like most fruit, and they're the result of what The Guardian calls "a genetic
accident in nature."
They're all nearly genetically identical, and that means they all have the same exact
vulnerabilities to the same exact diseases.
In order to keep banana crops healthy and productive, there are a ton of pesticides
used on many plantations.
The Environmental Working Group estimates there's an average of 35 pounds of pesticide
used on every acre of banana trees.
It's even administered differently than you might expect: farmers will often put each
bunch of bananas into a plastic bag and pump the pesticides directly into it.
Since bananas are peeled before we eat them, the end consumer doesn't have to worry too
much about the impacts of those pesticides.
But those poisons are doing other damage.
The chemicals have been found leaching into the environment and local wildlife, doing
harm not only to the animals that live near banana plantations but the people who work
there, too.
The pesticides have also been linked to birth defects and brain damage in the workers and
their families, with children living on and around plantations with high pesticide use
suffering the most.
You may think of the joy and flavors that come with every glass every time you pop the
cork on another bottle of wine.
But unfortunately, the reality of the wine industry should make you pause before you
reach for the corkscrew again.
In 2015, a 49-year-old woman named Paola Clemente died in the vineyards of Italy.
The New York Times reported that she'd had a heart attack, and her death brought a horrible
practice to light: the slave labor behind many Italian wines.
Her passing sparked an investigation that resulted in the arrest of six people, who
were accused of transporting and extorting poor women so desperate for work that they
would quietly labor under brutal conditions.
They were forced to labor in the fields for long hours, while being worked so hard that
even in the hot summer months they were afraid to drink water, because they were trying to
avoid asking permission to go to the bathroom.
Anyone who was late or missed a day wouldn't be offered more work.
And according to the investigation, Clemente was often teased because she was so tired
and ill she would fall asleep in mid-conversation.
Hers isn't the only death related to this industry that's hit the news in recent years.
According to The Independent, tens of thousands of people just like her work 12- and 13-hour
days performing back-breaking labor, for an average of about $30 a day.
Demand for soy products has been on the increase, and according to the World Wildlife Fund,
that's come with devastating consequences.
Countries like Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil produce an ever-increasing amount
of soy, and they're turning more and more land into soybean plantations to keep up with
demand.
That's causing a chain reaction of environmental impacts, beginning with the destruction of
the natural habitats of species like the jaguar.
It's also increasing the amount of soil erosion happening, particularly around bodies of water.
Those rivers and lakes are, in addition, growing increasingly polluted by runoff from the massive
farms, which are also giving off considerable emissions.
When a swath of savannah called the Cerrado was converted into soybeans farms, estimates
from the Brazilian government suggest it gave off greenhouse gases equivalent to more than
half the UK's total emissions from 2009.
There's social impacts, too.
Small farmers are being forced off lands that are being folded into massive commercial farms,
workers are being exploited for cheap labor, and native tribes who have lived on the land
for generations are being threatened by the relentless deforestation.
"Now we live in another world"
"My heart aches so much because this world has ceased to exist.”
Avocados got really popular, really quickly, and according to the Brown Political Review,
Mexico had earned a profit of roughly $2.2 billion from avocados alone by 2016.
That seems like it would be a great thing for Mexican avocado farmers.
But the skyrocketing popularity of this creamy fruit has also gotten some unwanted attention
from drug cartels looking for another source of income.
Some estimates suggest the Los Caballeros Templarios takes in around $150 million a
year from avocado growers, and they're methods are simple.
They approach farmers, and simply tell them that if they don't fork over some cash, bad
things are going to happen to them, their farms, and their families.
Not all avocado farms are beholden to the cartels, although some estimates suggest they
control about 10 percent of Mexico's orchards.
Some communities have worked together to kick cartels out, but others are still being forced
to produce what's become termed as "blood avocados."
There are other problems, too.
Even as the cartels are burning orchards of farmers who don't pay, water resources are
being absorbed into the industry, huge patches of forests are being turned into croplands,
and entire species are losing their homes.
Most of the world's almonds are grown in California orchards, and according to Forbes, increasing
demand for the product means that more and more land is being turned over to almond production.
In 2016, they found that satellite images showed around 23,000 acres of land had been
covered with almond trees.
Unfortunately, 16,000 of those acres had once been natural wetlands.
At around the same time — between 2007 and 2014 — there was a 27 percent increase in
irrigation.
And, in 2011, California was hit with a catastrophic drought.
The magazine Mother Jones says it takes 1.1 gallons of water to grow a single almond,
and the impacts of that are far-reaching.
They found that farmers in the San Joaquin Valley dug a mind-blowing 2,500 wells in 2015
alone, in spite of the fact that since 2013, the incredible amount of underground water
extracted and redirected toward crops — particularly almonds — has caused massive patches of
sinking land.
That's damaged roads, bridges, and other infrastructure, and it's severely damaged California's iconic
forests, too.
That all makes almonds a delicious, healthy snack with some catastrophic hidden consequences.
In 2017, The Guardian reported on a problem that was as disgusting as it was widespread.
Salmon farmers were fighting a massive problem: lice.
Steel cages containing farm-raised salmon are ideal breeding grounds for the sea louse,
a tiny, many-tentacled creature that survives by attaching itself to fish and eating its
way through the salmon's skin.
It only takes a few lice to kill a fish, and not only are they widespread, but they spread
disease and are resistant to control methods.
Pesticides are used to try to control the lice, and farmers are forced to use antibiotics
to stem the spread of disease through fisheries.
The immediate consequences are entire bodies of water that are being contaminated with
chemicals.
British broadcaster Jeremy Paxman has called for a complete overhaul of the salmon industry,
including more transparency when it comes to how salmon are raised, writing,
"Salmon has long been sold on the prospect of cleanliness and health.
The impression is fraudulent."
Some have also called into question just how humane the practice of farm-raising salmon
is, pointing to the cramped, crowded, and often disease- and pollution-filled waters
fish are forced to live in.
When The Guardian interviewed Fernando Ramirez, leading agronomist at the National University's
toxic substances institute, he revealed something shocking: in order to grow pineapples, around
44 pounds of pesticides are used for every 2.5 acres — and that's just the start.
The soil pineapples are grown in is often sterilized completely, during a series of
between 14 and 16 different types of treatment.
It's all perfectly legal in Costa Rica, one of the world's major producers of pineapples.
It's only gotten worse, and in order to keep up with demand while keeping costs low, massive
plantations have resorted to employing armed guards to watch over crops and workers, making
sure everything moves at a swift pace without interference.
There are an estimated 17,000 armed, private-company security guards in Costa Rica alone.
Those living near pineapple plantations have been forced to abandon traditional water sources
in favor of water brought to them in tankers, because of the high levels of cancer-causing
chemicals now in groundwater.
For many, it's not enough.
Villagers can wait days for safe water, or risk suffering from bone pain, vomiting blood,
and blindness in addition to the development of chronic illnesses that come from drinking
water polluted by the pineapple industry.
Strawberries are delicious, sure, but they're also regularly at the top of the Environmental
Working Group's Dirty Dozen list.
In 2015 and 2016, strawberries tested by the Department of Agriculture uncovered an average
of 7.8 different types of pesticide on each sample.
Around 20 percent of samples had 10 or more pesticides.
And the worst offenders came with a shocking 22 different pesticides.
Overall, they found 81 different types of chemicals used.
Some of those have been banned in Europe because they've been linked to causing cancer, and
here's the thing: Pesticides are applied at an average rate of 300 pounds per acre, and
that's not the only kind of chemical that's applied to strawberry crops.
Next, we need to talk about the fumigants.
Those are chemicals applied to the dirt to completely sterilize the soil and kill microorganisms
before they can kill the strawberry plants.
But some of those substances were developed as chemical warfare agents.
Some are even outlawed under the Geneva Convention.
After these fumigants are injected into the soil, farmers cover their fields with tarps
to keep the chemicals away from people.
But unfortunately those barriers don't always work.
In addition to all those chemicals, there's also the human cost.
When the not-for-profit publication The Conversation reported on California's strawberry industry,
they found widespread problems that included low wages for workers, poor working conditions,
and shocking water usage.
Delicious, but costly.
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