SL-032 Speed Bumps — Exploring Beer Distributors' Campaign Against Human Trafficking

“For the past two years, the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) has conducted an awareness and advocacy campaign to combat human trafficking, an initiative whose focus and scale are unprecedented in the organization’s history.”

That’s from the start of Kate Bernot’s story on Good Beer Hunting about a worthwhile cause to fight a global problem of trafficking here in the United States. But as you’ll read and as you’ll hear in this conversation, there’s far more understanding to what it all means. And that’s before we get to the many unknowns, which include unanswered questions about why the Association and some of its supporting organizations can’t or won’t provide details of how this effort came to be, and how they’re quantifying success. Human trafficking is not a cause directly related to the beer industry. But industry professionals and elected officials say beer distributors have the ability to be on-the-street “eyes and ears” and are uniquely positioned to help.

So what does this all mean, exactly, when one of the largest trade organizations in beverage alcohol makes human trafficking a priority? And what are the questions we still want to learn more about? That’s in this conversation.