I got my first jab of vaccine yesterday!
While waiting for my turn I was a bit worried if I could have side effects but I feel like every day and nothing has changed besides my shoulder hurting a bit.
One less thing to worry about now but this is not why I came here today.
In these days I lost my job at the food factory I was working for the past 8 months and actually I’m really happy about this.
I have a long story ahead to tell so if you’re interested give it a read.
Trying to keep my post as short as possible for the last 8 months I worked in a well known Italian food company in a town near mine on the Garda lake.
The place where I worked was something very similar to the Town of Hope from Hitman Absolution. It has one owner, small business that produces big, every employer was from this town or nearby, everyone knew everyone and if they didn’t know that person directly they knew some relatives.
I ended up here because a woman had an accident at work and they needed an urgent replacement to continue the production. I went there really happy because I finally had a job again after staying at home for too long and there I discovered, because that was the only thing everyone talked all day, that this lady got her hand stuck inside a machine leaving her amputated…
That day I had to work only 5 hours but they had so much work from the day before that I stayed there 13 hours instead on my own will working non stop getting the owner’s attention.
And so, as an outsider, I earn my place here.
I was the only one from a different town not to mention from a different country. Folks there were for the most kind, not everyone wanted to know me but that didn’t bother me much because I was there to work and make money.
While this factory has one owner as I said earlier, this business produces for a very huge Italian food chain that I cannot name. This trademark is own by a family coming from the south of Italy in a place very famous for organize crime.
They come once in a while, not often but when they do we find outside exotics cars and so we know that they are here to check that everything is going alright.
Inside this factory we produce a lot of food labeled as 100% guarantee Italian that are destine in the whole country as well outside Italy and even outside Europe.
The truth is that it has almost nothing of Italian besides the workers.
Every product comes from countries that has cheap work labor and they are already made and ready to be packed. We just put them in huge basins with water to wash away the salt and chemicals that prevents them from going bad only to add after the same identical stuff.
This food chain being big has other trademarks under it. Some for example are labeled as prestige quality, superior quality, fresh made, some are destine to supermarkets with low prices, some to top markets and others to restaurants with a “We only use local products” slogan.
All these trademarks being sold as prestige quality or to low price markets shares the same identical product.
For example the day we have to do mushrooms; we work them as we usually do adding salt and other chemicals inside these huge basins. For a few hours they go inside a certain type of cans, then for the next hour or two is changing time and goes inside other type of cans different from the ones before and then it continues like this till all the basins are empty.
Each of this can has a different food trademark saying how they are superior or unique and when they reach the super market shelf with each a different price you end up picking the same identical thing being the can of 7€ or the one that costs 1.99€.
Some products even arrive frozen! All we do is heat them inside water, add our chemicals and then label them as “fresh worked”.
One product in particular that got me to share this story are 2 types of mushrooms that comes from China…
They come 2 or 3 times a week inside 320 barrels in a container by ship. It takes 3 months for this cargo to arrive from China to Italy and when it does it’s full of mold inside because of the pressure of the chemicals and salt in these barrels some of them will burst open.
We have to pull them out all by hand one on one because as the boss said “We have been doing like this for 20 years. There is no other way”.
One barrel wights 75kg and it takes about 4 to 5 hours to empty the container.
On the barrels there is a company name. I searched for it online but all I find are adds for this products with a phone number and an email. No website what soever.
Once we found footprints of a child. This is the part that angers me the most and makes me feel ashamed. A coworker that is there for 17 years told me this is not the first time and that as far as we know this product might arrive from some prison or a workforced camp.
The mold sometimes even reaches inside. When I showed this a couple of times to my boss he just said “Don’t worry. Just turn them over a little and it will be fine”.
After some months I started to have some serious back pain and to get really pissed about all the scamming this company does. So I went to talk with someone specialized in workplace conditions.
I went there with videos about how we unload these containers, videos how the product arrives with mold inside, videos of the 2 fork lifters we have to use that brakes don’t work, I spoke about the lady who lost her hand and didn’t make news on local media and the story about what is going on.
This consultant told me I would do the right thing reporting them but to not do it or else I am risking to never find a job again.
Apparently if they are doing this for so many years there is a reason someone is letting them.
The fact that a woman lost her hand and no local news talked about it it’s because this lady never reported the incident and very likely she was paid to keep the secret.
The fact that every year this company has a quality check and it still remains open probably means the people sent to inspect are in good relations with the owners.
Yes, you almost broke your back doing something absolutely against every working code but even if you sue them it might take years till you reach court or reach it at all.
The last thing to notice is that the real bosses comes from a place in south Italy very famous for organized crime and when I asked “What the fuck! Are you saying I could get in trouble with the mafia?” this person changed subject.
Where I went to talk about all this situation was a paid studio. This person who talked with me didn’t even make me pay, I guess somehow she was touched by my story. I was told the risks I’m going against and suggested to just quit this job and go somewhere else.
When I went there it was in full lockdown and I couldn’t risk to lose the only job I had.
And so I continued my job but this time I filmed everything and photographed everything I could till at some point I was caught.
I don’t want to go much into details because it’s pretty recent and it hurts a little.
Nothing bad happened to me, I was just super surveilled by the boss and by the long timers working there. Every where I went inside that building, even the bathroom, there was someone who had to do something in the exact place I was going.
I mention in another post about my job that I will send memes to China inside these containers.
And I did and I send really a lot of them.
In this video you only see 4, in reality there are a lot more. The last ones were about the person standing in front of the tanks.
Somehow the owner found out. He couldn’t not let me unload the cargos because I was the only one never complaining but every time the truck driver was about to leave he asked him to open up again the container and he went inside to check the whole thing.
Luckily he started to do this very late when I finished all the memes. My guess is he just heard rumors and wanted to see with his own eyes how real it was.
I had a friend there who I used to go drink sometimes after work. I said I had because at some point he started to avoid me and I really understand why. This “friend” really needed the job and so he was doing what ever he could to keep it.
2 days when my contract was about to end I didn’t showed up and took vacation. I already knew they wouldn’t renew my contract and I was scared something might happen exactly the last days as a punishment. So I finally walked away from here and now I’m in talks for a new job.
I can’t go to the authorities because there is a huge chance nothing happens and this place will be warned about someone, that being me, is trying to take them down but I could go the international media.
There is a show called Le Iene and they take exactly care about things like this exposing the truth. If I do this, if I go to them, it will reach the public attention and from there authorities have to step in hard or else they will pass as corrupt.
It will make quite a scandal in my opinion. Like I said, this trademark is huge and of Italian quality there is so so little…
I made a video summing the whole situation. It has subtitles describing everything. There might be in this video things I forgot to mention.
It’s a bad quality I know, the Windows editor made the video like this when I added the subtitles. I will search eventually for a better option and upload a good quality in the future.
I’m sharing this video on youtube to raise awareness about the ugly truth of some food industries.
And here are some of the labels I secretly collected from a few products. On others I made directly the picture with the label attached.
For reasons to not get even more in trouble I hidden the names of the suppliers only showing the description of what’s inside and where they come from.
Congratulations, I’m very happy for you 
