300 Marchers Urge Vons Not to Sell Table Grapes
About 300 people and a marched Thursday to a Vons supermarket in the Lincoln Heights area northeast of downtown Los Angeles to launch a United Farm Workers petition drive to urge the grocery chain to stop selling California-grown table grapes.
“Vons will say it is not to blame, that this is not its fight,” UFW President Cesar Chavez told the demonstrators, including actor Martin Sheen and the Rev. Luis Olivares. “But it is. Vons has an obligation not just to its stockholders for the profits it makes, Vons also is responsible for the quality and safety of the food it sells.” Vons officials were not immediately available for comment.
The rally was part of the UFW’s 5-year-old boycott of California table grapes. Chavez began the boycott in 1984 because he said pesticides used by grape growers pose a health hazard to vineyard workers and consumers.
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