The Cashew Nut Issue

I was wondering the other day what joy the media are going to kill as we approach a season of good tidings (perhaps not this year or next) and good cheer in the company of family and friends. Sure enough, I wasn’t disappointed. A journalist from one of the leading papers had paid a visit to a cashew nut processing plant in India and was appalled by the plight of workers there.

She wrote that the cashew nut shellers (mostly Indian women) work under very primitive conditions for a very meagre wage of 1 krona (15 US cents) a kilo while the nuts cost 300kr (US$40) a kilo when they reach the supermarket shelf ready roasted and nicely packed, no mention made of who pockets what along the distribution chain from tree to shelf.

As people become more health conscious and health gurus propagate a Mediterranean diet with fruit and nuts aplenty, the sale of nuts has increased a few thousand-fold over the past few years with the cashew becoming the most popular nut sold these days. And what, you may ask, is the purpose of that article? To test our conscience, perhaps, as we dash around hunting Christmas gifts and stocking up for the Christmas dinner?

The boycotters will soon be out in full force demanding that shops stop importing the cashew and perhaps even smashing shops that sell them. Perhaps they can also explain to me how that will help the half million or so Indian women whose livelihood at present depends on shelling these nuts.

On Christmas Eve, as we chew our Christmas ham, smoked eel, meatballs and sausages, I wonder how many of us will still remember that article and consider how we can eat our favourite nuts with a clear conscience, knowing what we now know. And in between our burps, we may also consider how we can eat home-grown berries with a good conscience as well. After all, they are picked by workers who come all the way from countries as far afield as Thailand to work under very non-Swedish conditions for a very non-Swedish wage.

For a country that has progressed from an age with child labour fifty years ago to an age when even dogs have their own psychiatrists, perhaps there is a need for its inhabitants to be reminded once in a while that they are not that badly off after all. And the media will soon oblige again when they pick on another group of workers in another industry for them to pity and lament over.