Got Milk? You Likely Also Have Forced Labor, New Study Finds

A groundbreaking new study published in the journal Nature Food reveals that US federal dietary guidelines and other healthy diet models may carry varying levels of forced labor risk depending on the food mix. At the top of the findings: protein foods, dairy, and hand-harvested fruits drove most of the risk.

Researchers from the Friedman School at Tufts and the University of Nottingham scored more than 200 common US food items for forced labor exposure, then applied those risk scores to five diets: the Healthy US-Style Diet, Healthy Mediterranean-Style Diet, Healthy Vegetarian Diet, the 2019 EAT-Lancet Planetary Health Diet, and the current average American diet.

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“We found that recommended healthy diets could have higher or lower risk of forced labor compared with what Americans currently eat, depending on the mix of foods,” says Nicole Tichenor Blackstone, associate professor at the Friedman School and senior author on the paper.

The US-Style and Mediterranean diets ranked worse than today’s average American diet in terms of forced labor vulnerability. The Mediterranean diets’s higher seafood content pushed risk upward, while dairy was the largest risk contributor in the US-Style diet. In contrast, the Vegetarian and Planetary Health diets had lower total risks, though nuts and seeds emerged as outsized drivers in those plant-based patterns.

The study highlights that protein sources—including animal, plant, and seafood—are central to forced-labor risk in food systems. In the context of livestock, the authors included risks associated with slaughtering, meat processing, and feed production. They also noted that handpicked fruits and nuts or labor-intensive fishing notably magnify the exposure.

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The researchers emphasize that dietary change alone cannot eradicate forced labor. Still, the implications for food procurement policies are significant, given that the Dietary Guidelines for Americans influence school meals, institutional buying, and federal food programs. “We hope our work represents a starting point for communities to shape dietary transitions that promote equity and justice alongside health and sustainability,” Blackstone said.

Jessica Decker Sparks, assistant professor at Tufts and corresponding author, outlines worker-led solutions. “The best way to reduce forced labor in our food supply chains is to let workers lead in shaping solutions and to back those solutions with legally binding agreements that protect them from retaliation,” she says. Sparks points to models like the Fair Food Program, where farmworkers themselves help enforce labor standards, alongside trade policies that bar imports produced with forced labor, as ways to align ethics with supply chain integrity.

Context, data, and urgency

Globally, the International Labour Organization estimates that more than 27 million people are trapped in forced labor, many in private economic sectors including agriculture. In food systems specifically, prior research found that animal-based proteins, processed fruits and vegetables, and discretionary foods (such as sweeteners and coffee) accounted for the majority of forced labor risk, and that 62 percent of that risk occurs in US production or processing.

The seafood sector faces especially acute challenges. The US government has flagged forced labor concerns in imported seafood, requiring greater traceability and inspections; vessels flagged under “flags of convenience” have long been linked to exploitative labor practices.

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At the same time, corporate practices generally lag. A recent report from Walk Free and WikiRate found that only 14 percent of companies disclose any forced labor incidents in their supply chains, despite mounting evidence of abuse in high-risk industries. Trade enforcement is also gaining traction: US Customs routinely blocks goods made wholly or partly with forced labor, and new reports from the Bureau of International Labor Affairs provide deeper insight into illicit supply chain risks.

Given this backdrop, the new study reframes how we think of “healthy eating.” Rather than focusing solely on nutrients or environment, it suggests that ethical sourcing must become a parallel axis of diet planning, especially as public institutions wield enormous buying power.