Farm Bureau Shuns San Francisco Over Grape Boycott View
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SAN FRANCISCO — This city’s decision to support a United Farm Workers union grape boycott prompted the American Farm Bureau Federation to drop the city as the site of its 1991 annual convention, the organization said Tuesday.
The Board of Supervisors, which also acts as a city council, voted 8 to 2 Monday to bar city purchases of non-union table grapes. San Francisco spends about $4,500 a year on grapes for patients at two city hospitals.
Directors of the American Farm Bureau Federation met in Chicago on Tuesday and decided to seek another site for their convention, said Henry Voss, president of the organization’s California unit.
He said local politicians were wrong in saying San Francisco’s joining the boycott would have a negligible effect on the city.
“Removing 8,000 people from the city for a week, who would have an economic impact of $7 million, according to the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau, seems more than negligible to me,” Voss said.
The union claims that certain pesticides used on grapes are harmful to farm workers, a claim denied by the agriculture industry.
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