The story is all too familiar. Workers from developing nations are often underpaid and exploited by their employers, subjected to unsafe and substandard working conditions, all while being unfairly compensated.

Thanks to the atmosphere of fear in which they are forced to work, the workers have little chance for recourse against their employers, foreign magnates who considered their labor force as another thing antagonizing their elusive bottom line.

Fortunately for us, these problems seem to be abstract manifestations of the growing pains in the developing world, and of no concern to Iowans.

This week, a lawsuit against DeCoster Farms, a large Wright County egg producer, alleges that over a two-year period, DeCoster supervisors raped and assaulted Hispanic women who worked packing eggs for DeCoster. The women were assaulted by three different supervisors, sometimes at knifepoint, in the storage areas of the plant.

The Wright County sheriff’s office is not investigating any crimes.

They say that because they have not received any complaints, they have no reason to investigate. You can bet that the sheriff’s office would be a bit more concerned if the same thing was alleged at the local high school, regardless of whether it was reported to the authorities or as a complaint filed by an attorney.

The Hispanic immigrants of north-central Iowa comprise the majority of the labor force for DeCoster as well as the other giant egg plants and hog confinements that dot the landscape. Many of the employers have not yet caught on to legal hiring practices and continue to employ undocumented immigrants.

When the Immigration and Naturalization Service raids the egg plants and hog confinements, the immigrants get arrested and taken away from their families while the employers maintain a steady stream of disposable help to ensure that you can still pay less than a dollar a dozen for your eggs and that a pepperoni pizza is as cheap as a cheese pizza.

As the nation’s largest producer of eggs, Iowa and its citizens have an obligation to the agricultural workers on whom the industry depends.

With over 25 million laying hens churning out eggs on conveyor belts, Iowa has become a mecca for labor in the egg plants.

The laborers are routinely exposed to salmonella, pfisteria, and e.coli, in addition to the fumes that arise when hundreds of thousands of laying hens are placed in cages stacked 12 feet high in a warehouse.

Working in the egg industry may be a bit foul, but adequate compensation for dirty or hazardous work is not forthcoming. Iowa could never muster the native workforce willing to staff our egg industry, and immigrants, legal or otherwise, are essential to keep the big egg industries in business.

Apathetic management and law enforcement unwilling to investigate crimes perpetrated against Iowa’s agricultural workers are a disgrace to the rural values we proclaim. Iowans, no matter how recent their arrival, should be subjected to terror and assault in the workplace from supervisors who threaten their livelihood.

Egg consumers should know who is producing their food. We should be able to make intelligent choices about the products we buy.

Several years ago, the tuna industry was forced to put dolphin-safe logos on the tuna cans to indicate that no dolphins were killed in fishing for the tuna.

Maybe the Iowa egg industry should tell us on our egg cartons whether or not workers were raped in the packing of our eggs.

Rachel Faber Machacha is a graduate student in International Development Studies from Emmetsburg.