Thailand's seafood industry: a case of state-sanctioned slavery?

[Jonathan Fairfield]

Thailand's seafood industry: a case of state-sanctioned slavery?

Burmese migrant workers leave the port of Mahachai, Thailand, after unloading their catch. Photograph: Chris Kelly

Slavery is illegal, yet it is driving Thailand's growth – so why are retailers, producers and governments alike turning a blind eye?

Slavery is illegal in every country in the world. Yet slavery – the sort of state-sanctioned chattel slavery we thought we'd abolished about 200 years ago – is just what the Guardian has uncovered in the Thai fishing industry. We have established that prawns – shrimp, as they are known in the US – reach our supermarket shelves off the back of it.

This sort of slavery, in which people are bought and sold like commodities, subjected to extreme violence, held against their will and forced to work for no pay, is supposed to have been eradicated. Appalling revelations about the trafficking of people for domestic servitude and sexual exploitation remain disturbingly familiar, but we thought slavery at the heart of mainstream global economic activity was over.

The slavery in Thailand's fishing industry is doubly shocking because it is what the country's GDP is built on. Seafood is one of the main exports that have driven south-east Asian growth.

Tropical prawns used to be a rare luxury that few could afford. Now, however, most of us can, because they are farmed on an industrial scale. It has been possible to turn them into an item of mass consumption because, at the end of the chain, there are people working for nothing or next to nothing.

Slavery has not re-emerged by accident. It is as structural to modern global supply chains as it was to the sugar trade of the 18th and 19th centuries. Back then, slave labour in the colonies provided the biggest external contribution to Europe's economic growth. Throughout the Industrial Revolution, it was the triangular trade between England, Africa and the Caribbean – sending English goods and guns to Africa, where they could buy slaves to work the sugar plantations of the West Indies and transform a rarity into a cheap commodity to feed the new factory workers of English cities – that facilitated the accumulation of wealth back home. Slavery was the engine of emerging capitalism.

Without the slaves press-ganged on to Thai fishing boats to work unpaid, the economics of the modern prawn industry would not add up. And it's not just the prawn industry that has been built on slaves; slavery in various forms is part of the soya chain in Brazil that feeds the industrial chicken factories of the west, the all-year salad crops from Spain, and has even been uncovered in the supermarket egg chain in the UK.

How did this happen?

All supermarkets and transnational producers say they abhor slavery. But agribusiness has helped create the conditions for it.

Western-led institutions rewrote the postwar rules to open up world trade, removing regulations and barriers to big business. They opened borders to the free movement of capital and goods but, illogically, believed they could control the free movement of people that accompanied the process.

Source: The Guardian

Read the full story here: http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jun/10/thailand-seafood-industry-state-sanctioned-slavery

[noitom]

What a sensational article. Hope that global support mounts up to campaign against Thai slavery.

[sumtingwong]

That solves any minimum wage issues.

[sumtingwong]

What a sensational article. Hope that global support mounts up to campaign against Thai slavery.

Just "Thai slavery"?

What about the ideology of those far southern provinces? Their ideology sanctions slavery and that has been going on for over 1400 years with no "International alarm".

[waza]

Brilliant article on disheartening practice, headed by an inspiring picture. How can the coup leaders fail to act?

Edited June 10, 2014 by waza

[beb]

Incredibly poorly written article with hardly any real information or actual reporting to back it up. After reading the entire piece, I know next to nothing about the subject at hand. Do we really need articles to tell us that slavery is bad? Don't we all know that? Then why not give actual information?

[khunano]

Incredibly poorly written article with hardly any real information or actual reporting to back it up. After reading the entire piece, I know next to nothing about the subject at hand. Do we really need articles to tell us that slavery is bad? Don't we all know that? Then why not give actual information?

Could not agree more; a heap of buzzwords without any substantiating facts. Though we cannot deny the fact that too many people are exploited in the seafood industry it is not all of them. Besides Thai GDP is not mainly built on this industry there are plenty of others contributing; industrial, tourism, just to name a few.

[howzat]

Incredibly poorly written article with hardly any real information or actual reporting to back it up. After reading the entire piece, I know next to nothing about the subject at hand. Do we really need articles to tell us that slavery is bad? Don't we all know that? Then why not give actual information?

Don't know how much detail you need. The article surely is intended to create international ieadlines that this disgusting practice goes on and something positive comes from it. CP foods are at the start of the supply chain and the owner is I think the richest guy in Thailand so has the financial muscle to change things if he really wants to. For me personally I did not know specifically about the way the prawn industry operated and was quite shocked at the video as was my wife who is Thai. We are all culpable starting with CP foods, the retailers they sell to and you and I as the end buyer who enjoy our Tom Yam Kung.

I hope profit does not rule ok and this exposure will result in change but am not holding my breath.

[Utley]

And the junta's response is.............

[sumtingwong]

Incredibly poorly written article with hardly any real information or actual reporting to back it up. After reading the entire piece, I know next to nothing about the subject at hand. Do we really need articles to tell us that slavery is bad? Don't we all know that? Then why not give actual information?

Don't know how much detail you need. The article surely is intended to create international ieadlines that this disgusting practice goes on and something positive comes from it. CP foods are at the start of the supply chain and the owner is I think the richest guy in Thailand so has the financial muscle to change things if he really wants to. For me personally I did not know specifically about the way the prawn industry operated and was quite shocked at the video as was my wife who is Thai. We are all culpable starting with CP foods, the retailers they sell to and you and I as the end buyer who enjoy our Tom Yam Kung.

I hope profit does not rule ok and this exposure will result in change but am not holding my breath.

Thaksin?

[Nepse]

Slavery always existed and will always exist...human jungle. Why I am so surprised to read you seem to be surprised or even schocked. ?

Are you so ignorant or do you want to be ignorant ?

All is for sale : babies, children of all ages, girls, boys, woman...

animals are killed in horrible ways...and the more we will be on that planet, the worst it will be.

This is what we are, predators, survivers at any price...

you feel good and clean ?...but you can not ignore what the people we give the power to lead our countries are doing in the name of "our good"

No, it will never change, it is what we are...

slavery is everywhere, America, Europe, Asia...we just pretend not to know.

So much suffering everywhere , open your eyes.

This article is saying nothing at all...I do not think you really want to know about real slavery.

What can YOU do? Try to be a good person, do not mistreat your wife, your kids, the people around you, your dogs or any animal, respect nature...try not to do any wrong...try to balance evil by your goodness. But please, do not lie to yourself...we human are devil and angel, each of us...we need a lot of goodness to balance with so much evil.

[aussiebrian]

<script type='text/javascript'>window.mod_pagespeed_start = Number(new Date());</script>

Incredibly poorly written article with hardly any real information or actual reporting to back it up. After reading the entire piece, I know next to nothing about the subject at hand. Do we really need articles to tell us that slavery is bad? Don't we all know that? Then why not give actual information?

Could not agree more; a heap of buzzwords without any substantiating facts. Though we cannot deny the fact that too many people are exploited in the seafood industry it is not all of them. Besides Thai GDP is not mainly built on this industry there are plenty of others contributing; industrial, tourism, just to name a few.

Incredibly poorly written article with hardly any real information or actual reporting to back it up. After reading the entire piece, I know next to nothing about the subject at hand. Do we really need articles to tell us that slavery is bad? Don't we all know that? Then why not give actual information?

Don't know how much detail you need. The article surely is intended to create international ieadlines that this disgusting practice goes on and something positive comes from it. CP foods are at the start of the supply chain and the owner is I think the richest guy in Thailand so has the financial muscle to change things if he really wants to. For me personally I did not know specifically about the way the prawn industry operated and was quite shocked at the video as was my wife who is Thai. We are all culpable starting with CP foods, the retailers they sell to and you and I as the end buyer who enjoy our Tom Yam Kung.

I hope profit does not rule ok and this exposure will result in change but am not holding my breath.

The Guardian has a lot more information on this and many videos. Worth a look if you want more information.

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/series/modern-day-slavery-in-focus

[doctorproc156]

Incredibly poorly written article with hardly any real information or actual reporting to back it up. After reading the entire piece, I know next to nothing about the subject at hand. Do we really need articles to tell us that slavery is bad? Don't we all know that? Then why not give actual information?

Could not agree more; a heap of buzzwords without any substantiating facts. Though we cannot deny the fact that too many people are exploited in the seafood industry it is not all of them. Besides Thai GDP is not mainly built on this industry there are plenty of others contributing; industrial, tourism, just to name a few.

This article posted a little earlier has a lot more info. Also watch the 18 minute long embedded video it has some great info as well

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jun/10/supermarket-prawns-thailand-produced-slave-labour

[doctorproc156]

Double post

Edited June 11, 2014 by anantha92

[GuestHouse]

Incredibly poorly written article with hardly any real information or actual reporting to back it up. After reading the entire piece, I know next to nothing about the subject at hand. Do we really need articles to tell us that slavery is bad? Don't we all know that? Then why not give actual information?

Another apologist.

The article provides information on the existence of slavery in Thailand's fishing industry, it provides this information in English and in a publication that is syndicated world wide.

A few Thailand expat apologists are not going to put this one back in the bottle.

[ericjt]

"Who? What? When? Where? How?" Didn't that used to describe what good newspaper journalism was about? I sure wouldn't know it from this article.

So many words and so little hard content. Where are the facts? And the particulars? The charges might be true, but I can't tell from what the author has written here.

Shame on the author for writing it and shame on the Guardian for printing it. (And maybe Thaivisa for reprinting it.) Doesn't the Guardian have editorial standards any more?

And what about Thaivisa? Does anybody check what you pick up and highlight from other media? And make sure you're not wasting your members' time?

[bob strutt]

so what we need is the minimum wage, the dole, money if you dont work, all the great things that is now making the western world so good, get over it and get a job , and prosper, stop government hand outs , the age of entitelment is almost all over, worked on a trawler for years , now to many regs and it is unviable, 150 prawn boats in the past, to day 5 gold coast australia

[belg]

in my young age, i had to do militay service like many of you here ... at the rate of 100 baht PER DAY

so was that not slavery ? I would have preferred to work in that time, but the governement stole my freedom for a year and I did not even do anything wrong... trying not to do military service was equal to do jailtime on top of the 12 months ...

[Nielsk]

<script type='text/javascript'>window.mod_pagespeed_start = Number(new Date());</script>

Incredibly poorly written article with hardly any real information or actual reporting to back it up. After reading the entire piece, I know next to nothing about the subject at hand. Do we really need articles to tell us that slavery is bad? Don't we all know that? Then why not give actual information?

Answer Your questions: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/733327-trafficked-into-slavery-on-thai-trawlers-to-catch-food-for-prawns/?utm_source=newsletter-20140611-0752&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news

[edwardandtubs]

Incredibly poorly written article with hardly any real information or actual reporting to back it up. After reading the entire piece, I know next to nothing about the subject at hand. Do we really need articles to tell us that slavery is bad? Don't we all know that? Then why not give actual information?

Answer Your questions: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/733327-trafficked-into-slavery-on-thai-trawlers-to-catch-food-for-prawns/?utm_source=newsletter-20140611-0752&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news

For some reason TheScarf created 3 separate threads for 3 Guardian articles on the same subject.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/733325-revealed-asian-slave-labour-producing-prawns-for-supermarkets-in-us-uk/

The one in this thread is just an opinion piece which supplements the video and more factual articles. It seems a lot of posters would prefer to live in denial.

[sumtingwong]

It makes my prawns so much more tastier knowing that they were harvested by slaves that were slavers before, karmic justice. I love karmic justice.

[tw25rw]

The BBC has a similar story but with Taiwan, not Thailand as the subject...

[muchogra]

Quote from The Guardian: "If you buy prawns or shrimp from Thailand, you will be buying the produce of slave labour," says Aidan McQuade, director of Anti-Slavery International."

Are all prawns and shrimp produced by slave labor? Also, beside CP, there are other seafood producers such as Surapon Seafood, Thai Union Frozen, to name just a few. Has that director checked before he spewed irresponsible and defamatory remarks to include all of Thailand? Surely, the writer at The Guardian capitalizes on it by quoting him in a sensationalized news.

I think it's about time someone files some lawsuits against some of these right groups for defamation through propagandizing!

CP has already clarified that 72% of the suppliers are certified and the remaining is not clearly visible or directly under their control. Who knows?.. those migrants may even have better benefits than they were before in where they came from. If they could, they would like to come to the West, and for women, they could have many children, sometimes without knowing who their fathers are, but they receive benefits from the government from taxes paid by hard working people. The working middle-class pay and hardly able to save much. Their main assets are the house on mortgage and the retirement fund. Yeah, that's equality for you... No such thing!

[englishoak]

The BBC has a similar story but with Taiwan, not Thailand as the subject...

Oh its not just Thailand turning a blind eye and reaping profits. Its an industry wide problem and not just fishing.

These slaves can be and are bought and sold boat to boat without ever touching land sometimes, not necessarily from the same country either.

By the way these certificates are mostly copied and forged, for every one legally certified there are dozen using the same cert no on a copied paper. Its real easy, they just sell to the factories that are sanctioned and CP pick it up from there claiming no knowledge.

Its one big scam and most are aware of the process, they just choose to pretend otheriwse.

Edited June 11, 2014 by englishoak

[fab4]

Brilliant article on disheartening practice, headed by an inspiring picture. How can the coup leaders fail to act?

https://news.yahoo.com/pact-halt-forced-labor-snubbed-thailand-gulf-ilo-165246308.html