The Bitter Truth about “Big Sugar”

Here at The Real Agenda News, we strive for supporting folks who help raise awareness about real issues. I have just come across a new film -even though it is not new. It was produced by Brian McKenna and originally aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation back in 2005. I’m sure many of our busy readers have not watched it, so I decided to bring it back from the recent past.

According to its wiki page, the film Big Sugar exposes the dark history and modern power of the world’s reigning sugar cartels. Sugar, the summary says, was “at the heart of slavery in the West Indies in the 18th century”. In the same way, sugar has become a way of enslavement for many consumers who are trapped in the sugar-based diet.

While researching undercover, members of the Big Sugar production crew witnesses the appalling working conditions on sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic, where “Haitian cane cutters live like slaves.”

Most people in sugar plantations, the research showed, work 12 hours on average, and receive the equivalent to $2 for their daily labor.

With a special focus on Canada, Big Sugar also takes the audience on a journey to Dominican Republic and Haiti, where working conditions in sugar cane fields are no much different from any other country that bases its economy on the production of one single crop.

Make no mistake. Working conditions as the ones shown in this film still exist and will persist for as long as corporate cartels dictate government policy. Unfortunately, corporations have substituted powerful men who used to be the owners of the land many decades ago.

My congratulations go to Mr. McKenna for the great work he did.