Comras, the single father of two young girls, is a regular shopper at the Wild Oats Co-Op in Oakland, Calif. Once a week, the 43-year-old contractor takes his two kids on a shopping adventure to the local natural foods store.

Over the years, the Comras family has used these outings as occasions to learn about the natural world and to understand how food gets from the fields to the table. But these days, Comras is teaching 8 year-old Cassandra and 5 year-old Calliope to thumb their noses at the colorful cornucopia of fresh produce inside Green Hills.

"Dad says the farmers are mean to workers, and we have to make them stop," says Cassandra, a third grader at Emma Willard Elementary School. Her father simultaneously blushes and smiles. "Not every farmer is mean," Comras gently corrects his daughter, "but some don't treat the people who work for them very well."

Labor isn't a typical topic of conversation for the Comras family. Between soccer practice and piano lessons, there's seldom mention of anything more serious than a name calling incident at school or whether Calliope is getting a Furby for her birthday. In fact, Comras considers himself a "middle-of-the-road conservative," but allows that he has a "soft spot" for organic goods.

It was his interest in health food that first drew Comras to the debate surrounding government-imposed standards for the labeling of organic foods. Last year the National Organic Standards Board, a federally appointed agency, announced guidelines that would allow gene-modified, irradiated or sludge-fertilized crops to be marketed as "USDA Organic." Comras was one of the millions of organic enthusiasts who circulated petitions and wrote letters protesting the new policy. "I'm not a proactive kind of guy," admits Comras, "but I'm very involved with what my family eats."

In the end, the proposed guidelines were amended, but there remained a number of controversial elements -- the failure to address the use of antibiotics, nonorganic feed, and long-term confinement of animals in the production of organic meat. Ironically, it was the omission of standards ensuring the quality of life of chickens and cows which extended the debate to a discussion of farm labor conditions.

"Organic foods are the growth industry for the next century," predicts Scott Figgins, coordinator of Healthy Food Workers, the organization spearheading the latest campaign to modify the National Organic Standards Board labeling policies. "It's a $4 billion a year industry," adds Figgins, "but it's fueled by hundreds of thousands of people working in unsanitary and unsafe conditions."

Those "unsanitary and unsafe conditions" are the focus of Healthy Food Workers' efforts to clean up working conditions in the organic food industry. Figgins launched his crusade in 1996, when a young girl died after ingesting an unpasteurized Odwalla juice drink tainted with the deadly E.coli bacteria. The Odwalla scare, which resulted in several hospitalizations and a massive product recall, was ultimately linked to traces of fecal matter on the apples used to make the contaminated organic juice drink.

Epidemiologists eventually faulted unsanitary agriculture industry practices, namely the routine denial of bathroom breaks and facilities to farm laborers. In the Odwalla incident, it was most likely workers unable to wash their hands who introduced the E.coli bacteria to the affected apple harvest.

While advocates and industry leaders were debating whether or not genetically-engineered foods should receive the "organic" seal of approval, Figgins was already working on incorporating the labor component of the harvest process into the certification guidelines.

"As consumers of organic foods we pay a premium for the quality and purity of what we eat," Figgins explains. "If we're talking about organic meats, we worry about the confinement of animals and their treatment. When we worry about produce, we have to think about the confinement of workers and their treatment."

Figgins has taken that formulation on the road. Every weekend and some weekday afternoons, Healthy Food Workers volunteers distribute leaflets to shoppers at farmers markets and natural foods stores throughout Northern California. The flyers, which contain such friendly catch phrases as "organic begins with the hand that picks the fruit that feeds you," appear to be changing the way consumers shop.

As the Comras family steers their cart through the produce aisles of the Wild Oats Co-Op, Cassandra and Calliope ask their dad which farm stickers are "green" and which are "mean." By the end of their circuit, they survey the contents of their cart. "A little lighter than usual," Comras remarks, "but I don't think the girls will miss the spicy salad mix."

The South to the Future World Wide Wire Service is a weekly feed of technology and media news commentary and satire published by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Quotations attributed to public figures who are satirized are often true, but sometimes invented. Some fictional statements may, in fact, be true. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental. Editorial questions may be sent to John Paczkowski.