South African wine experts deplore Human Rights Report

The main accusation made my Human Rights Watch (HRW) referred to the particularly "gloomy" and "hazardous" conditions for laborers on South Africas fruit plantations and vineyards. The criticism included laborers being exposed to pesticides, them receiving insufficient salary and the fact that there was a general lack of sanitary health care. Also, according to the HRW, there is no unions, which makes the laborer's situation even worse. "The agricultural industry here in South Africa is enmeshed in a struggle with  social hardship", claims Daniel Bekele, Director of human Rights Watch.

It was particularly the South African wine industry that had most eyes on it not least due to articles online and newspaper reports. Now it seems as though more and more people are questioning the report, at least in terms of what it says about wineries. Michael Fridjhon, one of the most experienced wine journalists in South Africa pointed out the "small" group of wineries that were actually included in the survey, as well as the "Boulevard Art"-like revelations in his Business Day article. "Only 21 out of 60 firms actually took part in the survey - of those, only a third were wine-producing companies, which is 0.5 percent of the roughly 4000 wine producers in South Africa", says Fridjhon.

"Why does a supposedly well-meant report leave out all criteria of statistical preciseness, if HRW's goal is to protect workers from repressive measures", asked Fridjhon in his article. Also, he complained about the generalizations and the report's focus on the wine industry's problems, if only a small amount of agricultural firms and very few wine producers were asked to participate in the survey. "I would really prefer them not to use the word winery, after all, their report does not indicate whether its data even applies to wineries in the first place", claims Friedjoh.

Leading representatives of South Africa's agricultural industry are just as shocked about the report. Their opinion: "I'm sure that there's a lot of truth in this report, however, it is very biased and there is a tremendous lack of objectivity. The result is that the HRW certainly does not help identify the culprits, but rather covers them up. In case that some of the accusations can be proven to be right, the crimes mentioned in the report should -without any doubt- be taken to court". Also, the industry is very sad about the fact that the report and its incorrect statistics prevented the wine scene from further improving the labor conditions, which had already went through strong improvements in the past few years.

"While the wine industry has made big improvements in terms of worker conditions, other agricultural plants did not receive the same amount of assistance from the government.", says Fridjhon. "It is possible that there is a lot of frustration among other agricultural institutions, which can be attributed to the government failing to protect this very vunlerable group." Su Birch, Director of Wines Of South Africa (WOSA), whose organization is subsidized by the wine industry, says: "We explained to professionals at HRW that the two wine farms that were included in the survey are not wineries. Also, the report talks mainly about farms that are isolated in the country and that are very far away from today's standards. None of these places export any of their products".

There is no indication as to whether this report, which naturally aroused everyone's attention in South Africa, will have a negative impact on exports, particularly to Britain. "Yes, we definitely expected the markets to react to this report, however, nothing happened", says Keving Gallagher, Manager at the South African wine institution SA Wines. "I'm convinced that many of our clients know the producers and have already visited their sites, so they know what things look like for real". (red.yoopress)