California officials said they are launching new enforcement actions to protect underage farmworkers, including enhanced coordination among two state agencies charged with inspecting work conditions in the fields.

The actions follow an investigation by Capital & Main, produced in partnership with the Los Angeles Times and McGraw Center for Business Journalism, which found that the state is failing to protect underage farmworkers who labor in harsh and dangerous circumstances. Thousands of children and teenagers work in California fields to provide Americans with fresh fruit and vegetables. While laborers as young as 12 can legally work in agriculture, many described being exposed to toxic pesticides, dangerous heat and other hazards.

The new enforcement efforts will be overseen by the state Labor and Workforce Development Agency, which directs key agencies charged with regulating child labor and worksite safety laws, officials said.

Officials said the state’s Bureau of Field Enforcement, which regulates child labor and wage and hour laws, is developing plans to conduct joint operations with an existing agricultural enforcement task force assigned to the Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA.

Inspectors from the two agencies typically perform field operations separately and enforce different laws.

Working together will enable the state to “increase its presence in the fields and its capacity to identify violations,” according to Crystal Young, deputy secretary of communications for the Labor and Workforce Development Agency.

The agency is also overseeing an effort to share data among enforcement teams from departments such as the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, Department of Industrial Relations and Employment Development Department. Sharing information, Young said, will “further bolster our ability to identify potential violations for investigation.”

In a written statement, she said that state officials have been actively enforcing child labor rules across all industries, assessing 571 violations that resulted in “millions of dollars in penalties” from 2017 through 2024.

But records obtained under the California Public Records Act for that period show that only a small number of child labor enforcement actions involved the agricultural industry. Just 27 citations were issued for child labor violations to the thousands of agricultural employers across California, the records show. The fines totaled $36,000, but the state collected only $2,814.

Cal/OSHA enforcement records show that the agency failed to investigate most complaints about alleged violations of California’s outdoor heat law and reports of outdoor heat injuries, as well as an overall 74% drop in citations issued to agricultural employers for all infractions. The heat law requires employers to provide safety training as well as cool water and shade when temperatures exceed 80 degrees.

Worker advocates lauded the plans for increased enforcement as steps in the right direction. But they added that any long-term solutions need to address issues such as low wages and poverty, both of which drive minors to work in the fields to help their families pay rent and put food on the table.

“Being able to support farmworker families through a living wage, you know, is one of the ways that we can really address this issue,” said Erica Diaz-Cervantes, 25, a former underage strawberry picker who is now a senior policy advocate for the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy. With higher wages, “children won’t have to feel this responsibility to help their family financially by working in the fields,” she added.

Other efforts are underway, nationally and in California, to address issues involving underage farmworkers.

U.S. Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Palm Desert) recently reintroduced legislation that would change the federal minimum age for farmworkers from 12 to 14 years old for most farm jobs, as well as strengthen enforcement and improve nationwide data collection on injuries and fatalities. California requires minors to be 14 years old to work in most instances but allows children as young as 12 to labor up to 40 hours a week in agriculture when school is not in session.

Assemblymember Damon Connolly (D-San Rafael) said in a statement that he ordered an audit earlier this year to review issues such as inconsistent enforcement in California’s pesticide regulation process, which is split between local and state agencies.

The recently published investigation analyzed more than 40,000 state pesticide enforcement records from 2018 through early 2024 and found piecemeal regulation at the county level. The records showed that businesses operating in multiple counties were not fined for hundreds of pesticide violations — many of them involving worker safety.

More than two dozen underage farmworkers and their parents said in interviews that they worked in fields that smelled of chemicals and described feeling sick and dizzy or suffering from skin irritations. The workers and their parents are from families with mixed-immigration status, and Capital & Main has used only their first names.

The audit, expected to be completed next year, “will help us determine whether the need is for additional resources, statutory and regulatory changes, or more vigorous enforcement of existing laws,” said Connolly, who chairs the Committee on Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials.

Strawberry pickers, like these in the Salinas Valley, squat and bend over for hours on a summer day.

(Barbara Davidson / Capital & Main)

Connolly and Assemblymember Liz Ortega (D-San Leandro) said that the Department of Pesticide Regulation, which oversees pesticide safety statewide, should develop educational materials for underage workers to inform them about pesticides and how to report problems. Such information has been created for high school students to inform them of general worker rights.

“That’s one tool that we can use in agriculture to keep these children safe,” said Ortega, who chairs the Labor and Employment Committee and has held hearings on workplace safety in the fields.

A spokesperson for the Department of Pesticide Regulation said the agency has pesticide safety information in multiple languages for all farmworkers but has not created materials for minors.

Underage farmworkers said that such information is badly needed.

“Many of us don’t know what pesticides are, how they can harm our health or … what we’re supposed to do to safely work around them,” said Lorena, 17, who has been harvesting strawberries since she was 11 years old in the Santa Maria Valley. She described being exposed to chemicals that caused her eyes to burn and her skin to break out in rashes.

“Having all that information in one simple flier,” she said, “could make it much easier for us to be able to recognize the dangers and know how to protect ourselves.”

Lopez is an independent journalist and fellow with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. This article by Capital & Main was produced in partnership with the McGraw Center and was supported by the California Health Care Foundation and the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Los Angeles has officially broken up with coal.

City officials on Thursday announced that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has stopped receiving coal-powered electricity from its last remaining coal source, the Intermountain generating station in Utah.

“This is a defining moment for the City of Los Angeles,” Mayor Karen Bass said at a news conference. “L.A.’s coal divestment is not just about discontinuing the use of coal to power our city — it’s about building a clean energy economy that benefits every Angeleno. This milestone will further accelerate our transition to 100% clean energy by 2035.”

Electricity generation is one of biggest causes of climate change and burning coal is the most destructive way to generate power from a climate and environmental perspective. The city has committed to achieving carbon-free energy in the next decade through investments in cleaner technologies such as solar, wind, battery energy storage and hydrogen.

California has been gradually moving away from coal, which supplied just 2.2% of the state’s electricity in 2024, according to the California Energy Commission. Nearly all of that was from the Intermountain Power Project, which provided 11% of L.A.’s energy last year. The DWP divested from another large coal source, the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona, in 2016.

“This transition has been years in the making,” DWP chief executive Janisse Quiñones said in a statement. “It reflects the hard work of our employees, the support of our customers, and the leadership of our elected officials. Together, we are building a cleaner, more resilient energy future for Los Angeles.”

More than 60% of the city’s energy supply is now coming from renewable sources, Quiñones said, including the newly completed Eland solar-plus-storage center in Kern County, which began supplying L.A. and Glendale in August. The facility is one of the largest solar-plus-battery power plants in the nation.

It’s a stark change from 20 years ago, when the city’s energy composition was about 3% renewables and more than 50% coal, Bass said.

However, L.A. is not completely free of fossil fuels. The city will still draw from new natural gas-fired units at Intermountain. They can run on a fuel blend of natural gas and up to 30% green hydrogen, with plans to eventually transition to 100% green hydrogen in the future. (City officials said green hydrogen is expected to be added to the fuel mix next year.)

The board of the DWP also recently approved an $800-million plan to convert two units of its Scattergood Generating Station in Playa del Rey to run on a mixture of natural gas and green hydrogen, with a similar goal of running entirely on hydrogen as more supply becomes available.

Some energy and environmental groups were critical of that plan, which they said prolongs the life of fossil fuel infrastructure at a time when the city should focus squarely on proven clean technologies like solar, wind and battery energy storage.

Still, many celebrated the end of coal power in the nation’s second-largest city as a major step forward — particularly at a moment when the federal government is working against clean energy and promoting coal, oil and other fossil fuels.

“It is a remarkable, remarkable day,” said Evan Gillespie, partner at the decarbonization nonprofit Industrious Labs, during the news conference. He noted that when he first moved to L.A. nearly 20 years ago, the charge to get the nation’s largest public utility off of coal was seen as audacious and even laughable.

“If every utility, if every city, had the courage and the leadership that this city has had, today the world would be a very different place,” he said. “I know that the model that we’ve built here is going to help the rest of this country and the rest of the world follow in L.A.’s footsteps over the next 20 years.”

More than 1.5 million bags of different shredded cheeses sold at major retailers, including in California, have been voluntarily recalled due to possible metal contamination, authorities said.

The recall was initiated in early October by Great Lakes Cheese Co., an Ohio-based company, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The voluntary recall covered more than 260,000 cases of shredded cheese, and was prompted by the possibility of metal fragments in the products, an FDA notice said.

The FDA upgraded the recall Monday to “Class II,” meaning the use of or exposure to the identified products can cause temporary or “medically reversible adverse health consequences.”

The FDA’s investigation into the recall is ongoing. In a statement to The Times, Great Lakes Cheese Co. said a supplier of low-moisture part-skim mozzarella cheese “notified us that they were recalling cheese they had supplied to us due to foreign material.”

The company said it immediately isolated the affected raw material in its facilities and removed the packaged goods containing the foreign material.

“We instructed retailers to remove the products from store shelves after the announcement in October,” the statement said. “When we were confident all recalled products had been removed from store shelves, we distributed new product that did not have the potential to contain foreign material and was safe.”

Even though the FDA released its classification of the recall as “Class ll,” the company said its records showed “all product has been fully removed from store shelves.”

Here’s what you need to know:

What cheeses are affected?

The FDA has flagged the following shredded cheese cases as part of the recall:

• 235,000 cases of low-moisture part-skim mozzarella shredded cheese, including the brands: Always Save, Borden, Brookshire’s, Cache Valley Creamery, Chestnut Hill, Coburn Farms, Econo, Food Club, Food Lion, Gold Rush Creamery, Good & Gather, Great Lakes Cheese, Happy Farms by Aldi, H-E-B, Hill Country Fare, Know & Love, Laura Lynn, Lucerne Dairy Farms, Nu Farm, Publix, Schnucks, Simply Go, Sprouts Farmers Market, Stater Bros. Markets and Sunnyside Farms.
• 1,900 cases of Happy Farms by Aldi Italian-style shredded cheese blend.
• More than 15,000 cases of Italian-style shredded cheese blend, including the brands: Brookshire’s, Cache Valley Creamery, Coburn Farms, Great Value, Know & Love, Laura Lynn, Publix, Simply Go and Happy Farms.
• 117 cases of Food Club finely shredded pizza-style four-cheese blend.
• More than 4,000 cases of mozzarella and mild cheddar cheese blend, including the brands: Econo, Food Club, Gold Rush Creamery, Great Value, Laura Lynn and Simply Go.
• More than 4,000 cases of mozzarella and non-smoked provolone cheese, including the brands: Freedom’s Choice, Good & Gather, Great Lakes Cheese and Great Value.
• More than 1,800 cases of Good & Gather mozzarella and parmesan cheese blend.

The products have sell-by dates ranging from January to late March of next year, according to the FDA notice. The agency has a complete list online of the affected products and their UPC codes.

Where were these products sold?

The affected shredded cheese products came in five different varieties and were sold under a host of brand names at Target, Walmart, Aldi and other major retailers across the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

The FDA says they were distributed to 31 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin; as well as Puerto Rico.

What you should do

The FDA did not provide specific instructions for the recalled cheese products. When a product is recalled, the agency’s general guidance is to either return the product to the place of purchase for a refund or throw it away.

If the contaminated food product came into contact with your fridge or counter tops, the FDA recommends cleaning and disinfecting those areas. After cleaning those areas, you should also wash your hands with warm water and soap.