As little as 10 years ago, you took a risk when you bought a pineapple. The fruits that made it to the UK - a variety of pineapple known as the Smooth Cayenne - were scarily spiky, green on the outside and, more often than not, off-puttingly sour and fibrous within. Then in 1996, the Del Monte 'Gold' pineapple hit our shelves, the first of a new type of low-acid pineapple bred in Hawaii.
The chunky new pineapple took its name from its skin tone, more yellowy-gold than green. It had a slightly softer, less daunting exterior and less fibrous, more reliably juicy flesh in which its promoters found notes of coconut, even mango and passion fruit. But the key trait of this new type of pineapple was that it was twice as sweet as the hit-and-miss pineapples we had known. Almost overnight, the Del Monte Gold took the market by storm, rapidly becoming the world's bestselling pineapple variety, and delivering natural levels of sweetness in the mouth, up until then only found in sugary tinned pineapple.
Nutritionally it was all good news too. This toothsome pineapple contained four times more vitamin C than the old green variety. Nutritionists clucked with approval, recommending it not only as a rich source of vitamins and micronutrients, but also for its bromelain enzymes, known to promote healing and reduce inflammation. Consumers were understandably thrilled to be able to buy into the pleasurably therapeutic properties of this exotic super fruit for pounds 1.80 a throw, or even less. Consumption rocketed, and the Del Monte Gold, either whole, or more often cubed in ready-prepared fruit salads, rapidly became a fixture in the shopping basket of the healthy eater.
Seeing the profit potential for its winning pineapple, Del Monte tried to keep the market to itself. But the new hybrid pineapple had been developed at the Pineapple Research Institute in Hawaii in the 1970s and other fruit companies with research interests in this institute were adamant that the golden pineapple was not exclusive to Del Monte. Dole, a major player on the global fruit scene, brought out the Gold MD-2. The smaller Maui Pineapple Company launched a similar fruit, which it dubbed Hawaiian Gold.
Del Monte began legal action to stop its rivals, but failed. The rivals argued successfully that Del Monte's attempts to patent the golden pineapple were just a way to muscle its competitors out of the market. Since then, all the major global fruit companies have got in on the act. Bonita now markets its 'Ultra Sweet' pineapple and Chiquita sells a 'Gold Extra Sweet' pineapple. Golden pineapples have transformed eating habits throughout the world. In the UK, pineapple consumption has doubled in 10 years.
In the fiercely competitive global fruit market, major players aim to maximise profits by growing fruit in countries where production costs are as low as possible. Earlier this year, Del Monte made this explicit when it announced that it was pulling out of its pineapple operations in Hawaii because its pineapples could be 'grown for less in other parts of the world'. This is why, if there is a pineapple sitting in your fruit bowl today, there's a high chance that it comes from Costa Rica.
Why Costa Rica? Ten years ago, Costa Rica's pineapples were grown mainly for home consumption; now it has rocketed to the world's number-one producer of fresh pineapple, knocking back the Ivory Coast into second place. Costa Rica is sometimes referred to as the Switzerland of Latin America because it is stable and democratic. With little in the way of natural wealth, it has concentrated on tourism and agriculture and is keen to welcome foreign investment. Big fruit corporations already have considerable banana-growing interests in the country but, in recent years, bananas have not proven so profitable. Thanks to ruthless price wars between retailers, their value has plummeted.
Costa Rica also happens to have the hot, wet climate that is perfect for pineapple, a crop that dangles the prospect of tantalising profit margins for growers, distributors and retailers. The economic argument for converting existing banana plantations into pineapple plantations, or finding fresh, new land for pineapples, is very strong, and the push is on to expand production in the south and Atlantic areas of the country. The value of pineapple exports from Costa Rica is approaching that of coffee, formerly the country's leading export crop.
Costa Rica is a country whose abundant wildlife and breathtaking natural environment have made it a magnet for tourists from all over the world. If you were on holiday in Costa Rica, for a mere $15, you might very well be interested in taking one of the popular 'pineapple tours' laid on by pineapple companies to learn more about how the fruit is produced. On such guided tours, tourists can marvel at the wonderful world of modern pineapple cultivation and sample sweet, golden fruits fresh from the field.
But earlier this month, a fact-finding mission made up of Costa Rican trade unionists, representatives from the non-governmental organisation Banana Link (which campaigns for a fair and sustainable fruit trade) and the GMB trade union carried out their own independent tour of one particular plantation - the Pinafruit SA plantation in Limon province on Costa Rica's Atlantic coast. The plantation is owned by a Costa Rican company, Grupo Acon and grows golden pineapples for several major fruit importers, as well as Tesco and Waitrose. The delegation came back with a disturbing story, direct from the mouths of the workers. It's a story that sours the sweet taste of the golden pineapple and the GMB account supports independent reports that have been trickling out of Costa Rica that the pineapple boom is predicated on environmental damage and the exploitation of workers.
'The conditions we witnessed were dreadful,' says Bert Schouwenburg, a full-time official for the GMB in London. 'If you had any empathy for the people who grow and pick the pineapples, you just wouldn't grow pineapples this way. The workers were being used like donkeys, with no thought for the damage this back-breaking work does to their health. I was appalled at what I saw and what I learned from talking to workers. It was like seeing Dickensian conditions, only with sunshine.'
Another delegation member, Cath Murphy, a GMB shop steward from Scotland, was so upset by what she saw on the plantation that she cried at night when she got back home. 'I couldn't stop thinking about the faces of these young men, still only in their teens and twenties, but with a dullness and hollowness in their eyes. They looked totally exhausted. The plantations are so massive that they have to wake up about three am to walk to work for a five or six am start. They get paid for an eight-hour day, but they usually have to work for more like 11 or 12 hours to meet the targets. Then they have to walk home again. Most do not arrive back until at least eight in the evening. They only get 30 minutes break each day and there is no protection from the sun and the rain. We saw a group huddling under a trailer full of pineapple plants just to get some shelter while eating their packed lunch. There is the odd tin hut that passes for a toilet, but it is a very long walk to get to one. The one we saw had no water, no soap, no toilet paper, no washbasin.
The conditions were really bad. The boys told us that if they complain, the managers send out the police to check their papers. Many of the Nicaraguan workers are poorly educated and don't know how to get the right work documents, so rather than get into trouble with the police, they say nothing.'
The delegation brought back a letter to British pineapple consumers from a group of Nicaraguan migrant workers (who make up the bulk of the country's fruit workforce) on the Pinafruit plantation. In it they highlight their working conditions and ask for better treatment. What follows is a summary:
'Friends, brothers and sisters who consume these products, please help us! Our work generates big profits for the businessmen who are raking it in every day while subjecting us to poverty, anxiety and despair ... We work in sub-human conditions working very long and exhausting days ... There is no freedom of association. Those who join the union are treated like terrorists. We are paid on a piece-rate basis. We have to plant 5,000 pineapple plants a day to make the slightly better rate of 2.15 colones per plant (about pounds 4.50 a day or a penny for every five plants) ... To plant at this rate we have to sacrifice our own health because we are in constant contact with chemicals and have to work in the direct sun and rain bent over all day ... If you don't manage to plant out 5,000 you get money 'docked' from your pay ... Wages do not take into account inflation. [Inflation in Costa Rica has gone up 200 per cent since 1994 but wages have stayed the same.] Even when the fields haven't been cultivated for over a year and are full of weeds, or the soil is rock hard, we get disciplined or sacked if we are not meeting the company's productivity targets.'
Commenting on these allegations Tesco claims it is 'committed to ensuring all of its suppliers work to the highest employment and environmental standards. To this end, we work with our suppliers to help them monitor their supply chain, we carry out announced and unannounced audits over and above legal requirements and take immediate action to rectify any issues that can be improved.
'We have already searched through a sample of wage records and audit reports and from this information we can find no evidence to substantiate these allegations, however, we do take them extremely seriously and have already started further detailed investigations on the ground.
We will also be contacting Banana Link to see if they can give us any more information to help with the inquiry.'
Waitrose points out that it is committed to responsible sourcing and high standards of worker welfare. 'Pinafruit has EurepGAP accreditation - an international accreditation that governs good agricultural practice, including worker hygiene and safety. To achieve this accreditation toilets must be located no more than 500 metres away from workers.
This was consistent with what our supplier found during an unannounced visit to the plantation [earlier this month].'
During this visit, Waitrose says its supplier also found that 'each worker is entitled to one hour for lunch. But some choose to work longer hours if they wish to earn more. Workers are not disciplined or sacked for work rates below 5,000 plants a day; they are paid according to their productivity. Workers may work under very light rains which are typical of this climate, but as soon as rain becomes too intensive, they are stopped from working.
The vast majority of workers are members of unions or worker associations. Our suppliers found that 408 workers out of 458 are members of a union.' Waitrose has arranged for a full independent audit to take place 'very shortly'.
We have also put the allegations to the owners of Pinafruit, Acon, but have not had a response. It would be comforting to think that the grievances listed by these Nicaraguan workers were confined to one rogue plantation, but people who know the Costa Rican fruit industry insist otherwise. 'This is typical of the scandalous near-slavery conditions endured by the workers on whom the new Costa Rican pineapple boom depends,' claims Alistair Smith, international coordinator of Banana Link. 'Just like in the banana industry, pineapple plantation owners have screwed down wages and benefits to lower than any acceptable minimum on the backs of mainly Nicaraguan migrant workers trying to escape their country's grinding poverty.'
A chorus of organisations in Costa Rica itself is now blowing the whistle on the country's pineapple miracle. According to Carlos Arguedas, health and environment officer for the Union of Agricultural Plantation Workers, Sitrap (Sindicato de Trabajadores de Plantaciones Agricolas), 'they bring jobs but at a high price. The pineapple companies do not respect labour rights, workers or the environment. Animals are dying, soil is being degraded and the health of the population is starting to be seriously affected. These pineapple monocultures are just grey-green deserts.'
As anyone who has ever carried a viciously spiky pineapple home from the shops can testify, pineapples are not an easy fruit to handle. Grown on a kitchen garden, or even on a modest commercial scale, there is nothing inherently bad about pineapples as a crop. But when cultivated on an industrial scale, they are arduous to grow and punishing to handle. The biggest plantations of pineapples in Costa Rica cover an almost unimaginable expanse, equivalent to more than 1,800 football pitches. In order to make way for this intensive cultivation, the land is cleared of all other trees or vegetation that might get in the way of crop-spraying, rapid planting and picking. Unlike banana plantations, where workers have some shade and cover from overhead banana plant leaves, pineapple pickers and planters are exposed to the elements, most of the time bent double or crouched over the low, spiky pineapple plants.
Monocultures of pineapples on the Costa Rican scale are a honeypot for pests and diseases and so the fruits have to be grown with substantial inputs of pesticides, either applied by knapsack sprayers on the backs of workers, or dispensed by long-armed truck sprayers. Workers should be given protective clothing, but reports suggest that this is a rarity. In practice, working with no shelter under the full glare of the sweltering sun in temperatures that regularly hit 35C at midday, workers say that the wearing of protective clothing becomes unbearable.
One of the most visible health effects of working continuously with jaggy, pesticide-soaked plants is that the planter's fingernails become deformed and eventually fall out, claims Cath Murphy. 'The boys showed me their fingers and their nails were all brown, unusually thick and infected. They told me that their nails drop off all the time. I only saw one boy wearing rubber gloves.'
Rotten nails may be the least of their worries. 'Respiratory diseases, asthma, babies born with defects, spontaneous abortion and male sterility are higher in the pineapple zone than anywhere in Costa Rica, all health problems linked to pesticide poisoning,' says Linda Craig, director of the UK Pesticides Action Network. Since the workforce is casual, and often made up of migrant workers, they can easily be dismissed if they fall ill.
Waitrose points out that the EurepGAP accreditation, which this plantation has, emphasises good agricultural practice, including worker hygiene and safety, and a stringent requirement is the use of protective clothing by workers.
The Foro Emaus, a Costa Rican umbrella group for some 25 environmental organisations, has been campaigning for the last three years to stop the expansion of pineapple cultivation. It blames the chemicals used in pineapple plantations for contaminating the water and soil. It says that rivers and wells are choking because of sedimentation from pineapple cultivation. Photos of the river delta in Costa Rica's Tortuguero National Park - a nesting spot for rare green turtles - have shown that it is filling with sediment that many believe comes from pineapple plantations.
Unlike its traditional coffee production, which is primarily Costa Rican-owned, the pineapple business is overwhelmingly controlled by foreign corporations.
'The expansion of pineapple growing is largely in a few hands and most of them are not Costa Rican,' says Guillermo Acuna Gonzalez, of Foro Emaus. The worry is that when the current pineapple boom runs out of steam - in as little as four or five years according to some business predictions - Costa Rica will be left to pick up the social and environmental damage left in its wake.
A growing number of Costa Ricans are further dismayed by the fact that the uncontrolled push to get more and more land under cultivation has seen swathes of tropical forest that supported a rich diversity of wildlife turned over to pineapples. This deforestation is not sanctioned by Costa Rican law, but environmentalists allege that certain companies have nevertheless cut down primary forest, often by leasing land in the forest reserves of indigenous people. Sometimes overnight, all trees and vegetation have been mysteriously uprooted to make way for furrowed lines of pineapple plants which rapidly establish themselves in the hot, damp conditions.
Another Costa Rican environmental organisation, the Costa Rican Popular Front against Pollution - an alliance of trade unions, church groups and non-governmental groups - has grown up to oppose the expansion in the Costa Rican Buenos Aires county of Pindeco, a subsidiary of Del Monte. This company produces at least 50 per cent of Costa Rica's pineapples, supplying Asda in the UK, and other non-supermarket customers. Del Monte acknowledges that it has a profound responsibility to practise exemplary corporate stewardship. 'We uphold this duty by being deeply committed to protecting and preserving the natural environment, providing our customers with high-quality, safe produce and establishing a workplace where employees around the world can work in secure and healthy conditions,' it says. But the Popular Front insists that Del Monte does not honour this promise.
The Popular Front has also championed the cause of livestock farmers who are adamant that pineapple plantations are harming their livelihood and causing pestilence. In recent years, cattlemen in the Buenos Aires area have been plagued by clouds of blood-sucking flies - Stomoxys calcitrans - that cause their cattle to lose their appetite and therefore lose weight. They blame the pineapple plantations, saying that the flies breed in rotting piles of leaves left after the fruit is plucked. Since these flies have become a public issue, wholesale burning of harvested fields has become the more common way to clear plantations, a practice condemned by environmentalists.
What price the golden pineapple when we learn more about how it is produced? How can the ethical consumer avoid being complicit in suffering at the other side of the world? Buying an organic pineapple at least guarantees that workers have not had their health compromised by pesticides. A Fairtrade pineapple brings with it the reassurance of a better wage. But it doesn't help the people, like the young Nicaraguan men at Pinafruit, who grow all our other pineapples.
The workers at Pinafruit are not asking for a consumer boycott. They need the work, and are simply asking for that work to be made fair and equitable. 'We are not against exports but we are against exploitation,' they say. 'We want wages that are based on the actual cost of living, reasonable working hours, and freedom of association. We demand our rights as human beings. We want you to give us your hand.'
Their plea to the outside world must make us wonder just how typical their experience is.
How many other faceless workers, growing tropical crops for our tables in faraway countries, could write us a similar letter? This is a question that can only be answered by the companies who import and sell our fruit. And the onus is on them to make sure that they have a genuinely good story to tell.
