The use of either forced or slave labor in the Thailand seafood industry is not a new revelation, but an ongoing series of human-rights abuses and human trafficking.
Thailand’s outrageous abuses against workers in the country’s multibillion-dollar seafood industry was documented in June of 2014 by Digital Journal, which pointed out how corruption, going all the way to the highest levels of government, succeeded in keeping the abuses under wraps.
While the Digital Journal story said the United States would soon rate Thailand in the most severe tier of human trafficking countries alongside North Korea, nothing has been done. Seven months ago, Mark Lagon, a former State Department ambassador for trafficking in persons, told a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee that modern-day slavery does exist in the Thai seafood industry.
Lagon said, “As has been reported for years, the Thai fishing industry is rife with forced labor, both on the high seas and within seafood processing and packing plants.” However, he added that it remains to be seen if President Obama would impose the sanctions it is authorized to deploy, barring Thai seafood from U.S. markets.
And it is not just U.S. markets getting Thai seafood. The UK, Canada and other countries fund Thailand’s human-rights abuses every time they receive a shipment from Thailand.
Lawsuits bring the abuses back into the public eye
On August 20, 2015, a federal lawsuit was filed against Costco demanding they company stop buying shrimp from suppliers in Thailand. According to the filing, it alleges that Costco is deceiving customers by not including an advisory about slavery on product packaging.
“Any representation by Costco that slavery in the supply chain is not allowed is simply false,” the lawsuit alleges. “Costco continues to unlawfully induce consumers to buy Costco farmed prawn products … through the use of slave labor.”
One week after the Costco lawsuit was filed, Nestle was hit with a class-action lawsuit that alleges the company’s Fancy Feast cat food, imported from its partner, Thai Union Frozen Products, was the product of slave labor.
Nestle is one of the biggest food companies in the world, with brands that include Perrier, Purina pet food, Haagen-Dazs, and Nescafe, to name just a few. Surely it already knew of the allegations against the Thai seafood industry, but it commissioned an investigation from Verite, a U.S.-based fair labor advocacy group. The report confirmed what was already known.
Nestlé’s Thai Shrimp Supply Chain
The report describes deceptive recruitment practices, underage workers, hazardous working conditions, and violence on fishing boats and factories in Thailand’s seafood industry. The report also found most of Thailand’s seafood workers are from Cambodia or Myanmar, brought in illegally by human traffickers, provided with false documents, and more often than not, sold to fishing boat captains.
The report also details life for workers on the fishing boats, saying there is “limited access to medical care for injuries or infection, and working 16-hour days, seven days a week; enduring chronic sleep deprivation; and suffering from an insufficient supply of water for drinking, showering or cooking” is routine.
The same or worse treatment is foisted on land-based workers, with the laborers being locked in cages at night. But all the workers interviewed by Verite spoke of not being paid for over a year, and then being billed for “services” that took most of their money. There was also many descriptions of verbal and physical abuse, including beatings, and even deaths from abuse.
Nestle has publicly stated it would work on improving the situation, claiming they would educate fishing boat captains on proper practices, as well as tracking the source of their seafood ingredients. This is a step in the right direction, but many people wonder if its enough.
Steve Berman, a managing partner of the law firm Hagens Berman, which in August filed the class-action lawsuit against Nestlé, says that while what Nestle is doing is good for the consumer, “Our litigation will go forward because Nestlé Purina still fails to disclose on its products, as is required by law, that slave labor was used in its making.”
