Pennsylvania is one of the world's great apple producers. Adams County, in the south central part of the commonwealth, is famed for it's apples and commercial apple processors. It seems very odd then that a Pennsylvania prison should go all the way to New Zealand to get apples; 12,000 miles away! One Pennsylvania prison decided that the clever thing to do would be to send money not just out-of-state, but out of the country. The prison functionary didn't see any reason to help the local economy or to spend taxpayers' money within the state. What did he care about jobs in the community? Instead of going a few miles down I81 to buy apples for the prison messhall, the fellow in charge of the kitchen looked outside the state and outside America. First he imported odd apple-like fruit from 6,000 miles away from Chile in South America. They allow the use of toxic pesticides, peasant-labor and fertilization with human waste. When that supply ran out, the prison bureaucrat looked farther away; on the bottom of the world across the Pacific Ocean. He imported from New Zealand. I certainly have nothing against New Zealand. As far as I can learn it's a great place with good people and a fine government. My point is simply that does it really make good economic sense for Pennsylvania taxpayers to ship money half way around the world rather than help the Pennsylvania economy? The state is, after all, dying; losing jobs at the rate of 250 a day under George "Adolf" Bush. Young people are fleeing at the rate of almost 500 per day. The only growing business in Pennsylvania is imprisonment. The prison system squanders almost $3,000.00 per minute! Should that enormous sum be exported? After we'd published this story about the fruit being bought by the Frackville state prison in East-Central Pennsylvania, the local food buyer abandoned his New Zealand connection. It wasn't long before apples from the South American country of Chile were back on the prison menu. For those unfamiliar with Chile, it's a skinny impoverished country on the far Southwest coast of South America. It's famed for it's deserts, enslaved peons and remarkable lines scratched in the sand and visible only from the air. We asked why fruit should be bought from so far away when it's available very close to home. We observed that it was ecologically irresponsible to cause shipment of anything for such a distance. The pollution involved with each mile of travel harms us all. Regardless of price, each apple also represented a certain amount of expended gasoline, oil and carbon added to the atmosphere ... a VERY poor practice and irresponsible. We asked for an explanation. Usually prison officials are afraid to respond to us. They don't like reading their nonsense online. In this instance, however, the local food buyer demonstrated more responsibility. He told our cofounder that he doesn't really try to buy any particular apples. He puts an order out for bid and buys the cheapest offer. (We're paraphrasing.) We assume that the explanation is true. It begs the question, why are the bidding procedures for Pennsylvania state agencies rigged in such a way that it becomes public policy to pollute and to exploit poor peasants in third-world nations? There's something very wrong here! Reduce the state's sloppy "carbon footprint" and display a decent social conscience. Even in far right-wing Pennsylvania, there are things more important than money. Haven't the Republicans screwed up the world enough? Since originally publishing this article we've also discovered that a great many of the imported Frackville apples don't get to the prisoners at all. Substantial quantities are brazenly stolen and carried out the front gate of the prison. Apparently they're laid out as lures for deer. The deer get used to coming in to eat the fruit. Then in (or close to) deer hunting season, guards bravely lay in ambush and kill them. They call it sport. Apples are imported from Chile so that guards can shoot deer from hiding. It's the American way! "A man should never be ashamed to admit that he's been in the wrong, which is to say...that he's wiser today than he was yesterday" Alexander Pope, cir. 1740 You are welcome to use or republish any of our material. Please give www.prisoners.com credit as the source. Return to the Public Enemies Menu Return to the Main Menu Go to our site's Search Engine Send us Your Comments or Input.