Farm Workers’ Protest Targets Vons

About 200 United Farm Workers and their supporters protested in front of a Vons supermarket in Burbank Thursday, launching the start of what organizers said was a major offensive against the store for breaking an agreement not to advertise grapes grown with pesticides.

“We tell all the citizens of this great country, of this great county and city not to shop at Vons until Vons agrees to stop advertising, promoting and selling the contaminated, poisoned grapes,” UFW President Cesar Chavez told a clapping, cheering crowd.

Carrying signs that read, “No Grapes, No Malathion,” and “Don’t Shop Here,” protesters marched from McCambridge Park in Burbank to a Vons market on San Fernando Road.

“This is really the only alternative we have,” protester Tom Dillon said of the demonstration.

The Vons grocery chain, the largest seller of table grapes in Southern California, agreed in 1989 not to advertise the grapes, which are grown near Coachella in Riverside County, said David Martinez, UFW secretary and treasurer.

But Chavez said the chain broke that agreement three weeks later and began selling them at extremely low prices. The UFW is promoting a boycott of table grapes grown using pesticides because they believe the chemicals cause cancer in farm workers.

“Vons speaks through both sides of its corporate mouth,” Chavez said, after holding up a newspaper advertisement promoting grapes.

Vons spokeswoman Vickie Sanders said the store offers its customers a choice. “We have tested the grapes and there have been no detected residues of pesticides,” she added. Sanders declined to comment further.