How deeply are the local police and politicians implicated in this slave trade?

EJF's investigations have found close involvement of police and Thai government officials.

We have documented close working relationships between police and both brokers and business owners including police cars being used to transport victims of trafficking to ports; police officers returning escaped victims of trafficking to their captors; and officers leading investigations being involved in putting pressure on victims to drop human trafficking cases in the Thai courts.

Business and politics mix quite freely in Thailand and many influential business owners in the seafood industry hold positions of or directly influence political power at the local level. We have documented a prominent business owner using slave labour whose brothers are Mayor and Deputy Mayor of a municipality.

There have also been shocking and damning reports of the Thai Navy's involvement in trafficking networks over the last year - much of which is conducted at sea using fishing vessels.

Two questions:
Are these practices and the existence of them out in the open in Thailand or is it a very secretive operation?
Is there active resistance or boycotting against the use of slaves in the prawn industry in Thailand itself, or is the industry tied to higher powers that control resistance as the video suggested with the police?

Hi Hanna25,

Slavery is an open secret in Thailand, whether it's in the sex or fishing industry, and it's well known that thousands of migrants are little more than indentured servants forced to work without pay for extended periods of time.

As Steve said, there are some NGOs working on this issue, but even they have come under fire and are often under great threat from the Mafia and corrupt police/officials who operate in and profit from the trafficking industry.

Hi Hanna,

Thailand is aware of this problem and Government and industry make regular and vocal statements about progress in combating it. Unfortunately, many of these actions are ineffectual and border on the superficial, seemingly to reassure buyers and critical international observers.

The Thai public are not very concerned with this particular issue although there are some civil society and migrant rights groups in Thailand working to end these abuses. This is made all the more difficult by the close relationship between politics and business in Thailand, especially with the involvement of corrupt police and provincial government officials in trafficking networks.

The Thai government response and linkages with corrupt officials and police is addressed in EJF's report Slavery at Sea, which you can find on our website: www.ejfoundation.org

Seems to me that, while prawn production uses a lot of trash fish for feeding, the pet food market uses even more, and more people feed dogs and cats than eat prawns. At one point a year ago, I noticed that a great deal of "wet" food for cats was produced in Thailand, and most contained fish and fish by products. Is this still the case?

Some of this trash fish will go in to pet food and other products, but we do know much goes as feed to shrimp farms. How? We've tracked it there following delivery vans and also key players in the industry have made clear to us that this is happening. There is no doubt - it's proven fact.

So, the retailers are blaming the "fact" that they do not have the visibility of the entire supply chain and that they do not have the knowledge of where slavery occurs in the supply chain. Could the Guardian offer these retailers this visibility and demand them to act on it?

Hi Djibrils,

This film is a way of providing some "visibility" to an otherwise somewhat invisible work force, but in truth it has been an open secret for years now that slavery has existed on these fishing boats. At first it was Thais from the rural north and northeast who were duped onto the boats, some of them chloroformed at bus stations after hoping to find work down south. Now it is the poor migrants from Thailand's neighbouring countries who are targeted. With few provisions to register these migrants or provide help for them (although they promise this is changing), the Thai government allows these men to remain as "ghosts" out at sea, easy prey for the boat captains and boat owners who depend on them to comprise their workforce.

Shrimp can be tracked.

For the best part of a decade players in the industry have talked to me about their inability to track supply chains for some products like shrimp or cotton and that is why abuses can't be eradicated.

But this is not the case, EJF has tracked supply chains...and so have retailers: when it is an issue of human-health it can and has been done, so why not to combat slavery?

What the retailers need to do is use independent, unannounced supply chain audits.

.

Could you talk us through the challenges of filming? How easy or difficult did you find it to source contributors?

Hi Carmen,
We shot over a period of six months. First of all we did a lot of desk research; making phone calls and building a visual map of the industry as best we could. Then we travelled to various ports around Thailand, shooting with small hidden cameras. We shot relatively few conventional interviews. One challenge was working in three languages (Thai, Burmese & Cambodian), access was also a challenge but we cannot really discuss how we did that, other than the use of hidden cameras.

OK so why are you not also writing about these other products? Is there not a general problem with Thai trash fish rather than specifically only with shrimp?

Very important point.

Many of the fishmeal producers in Thailand manufacture feed in batches for specific uses: i.e. chicken, shrimp, pig feeds, etc. As the Guardian have pointed out in their investigation, simply following trucks supplying trash fish to feedmills and feed to farms is enough to establish the links.

With regards to verifying a slave-free shrimp supply chain, this is difficult but not impossible. Consumers, retailers and buyers need to put pressure on Thai suppliers to establish traceability down to the boat level by ensuring meticulous and transparent documentation of purchases of feed and trash fish by the shrimp and fishmeal producers further down their supply chains. Then they need to implement independent and random social audits, including direct and confidential interviews with workers, right down to the boat level to ensure that chains are free from slavery and abuse.

I've been only buying North Atlantic mini prawns in the last several years, after I heard after environmental damage in Malaysia due to king prawn farms.

Is this a solution, or are North Atlantic prawns implicated in this too?

This is a good choice to make, these prawns are produced in a totally different, sustainable, way. If you want to know more have a look at http://www.fishonline.org/fish/prawn-northern-345

EJF is investigating now what human rights abuses there may be in other fisheries, but we've found nothing like the extent of violence in the Thai industry in any northern fishery.

Do you think that retailers should have staff that monitor the whole chain from production to plate, then maybe things like this would be picked up quicker? Do they have staff that do this, and could this potentially be turning a blind eye for the sake of profit?

The retailers definitely have to play a role in helping to eradicate slavery from their supply chains, and there are concrete ways in which they can do that (see below) but they are not the only ones responsible here. The local conditions in Thailand are also very conducive for these kinds of abuses to happen, and if anything they are going to become more prevalent, as profit margins for the boat owners continue to shrink, they are going to force the trawlers to travel longer distances, using more fuel and working longer hours to catch less fish (because of over fishing). In this scenario an invisible and expendable migrant workforce are ideal.
Couple these economic conditions with a culture of corruption and nepotism, and there is little political will to enact any meaningful change on the ground in Thailand. Political pressure (perhaps in the shape of a downgrade to Tier 3 of the Trafficking in Persons Index due to be release later this month) would help to force the Thai authorities to take this issue seriously.
The retailers can act by using their commercial leverage to push reforms back down the supply chain, by performing unannounced spot checks the whole way down the supply chain, by not buying from those who are found to use slave labour in the production of their materials, by pressuring the Thai authorities to take the issue seriously or lose the valuable trade.

Does the packaging say if CP Foods is the supplier?

In some cases, yes, when it is coming directly from CP Foods. In others, no -- keep in mind that CP Foods sells to numerous retailers, caterers, businesses and the like, which means they can sell their raw product that will then end up in another brand name prawn stir-fry or prawn mayonnaise mix.

Usually not.

Sometimes, retailers will put a 4 digit number on the back of the product which can tell you the factory where the shrimp was processed for export.

The packaging for many shrimp products often just says 'Farmed in Thailand for xxx' or lists multiple countries of origin.

I've been only buying North Atlantic mini prawns in the last several years, after I heard after environmental damage in Malaysia due to king prawn farms.

Is this a solution, or are North Atlantic prawns implicated in this too?

This is a good choice to make, these prawns are produced in a totally different, sustainable, way. If you want to know more have a look at http://www.fishonline.org/fish/prawn-northern-345

EJF is investigating now what human rights abuses there may be in other fisheries, but we've found nothing like the extent of violence in the Thai industry in any northern fishery.

How are we know which prawns are from companies using slaves? Are we to boycott all prawns fro Thailand/south east Asia?

How can you tell? Ask your supermarket or retailer if they can guarantee that their prawns are not produced by slaves. If they can, ask them exactly how they know. If they can't guarantee this, then don't buy them and let the supermarket bosses know you won't buy.

Hi ID169625,

Whether you buy from Thailand depends entirely up to you on how you feel about the Thai government's willingness and efforts to combat slavery. While this particular story is about prawns, the bigger question is -- how comfortable are you buying any product from a country that openly acknowledges trafficking and slavery in its country, is estimated to have about half a million slaves currently enslaved within its borders, and whose officials are profiting from this slavery? There is no real incentive for the Thai government to stop the slavery if various groups continue to benefit from it.

As for tracking, you can use the barcodes on the back of many seafood products to see if they came from Thailand. Bear in mind though that CP Foods operates throughout southeast Asia, and slavery, while endemic on Thai fishing boats, also occurs on trawlers throughout the region.

Why are British retailers buying from these suppliers?
Human rights are more important than being the cheapest in the high street.
Would any of the executives or buyers at the high street shops like to be slaves?
If not why support slavery?

Hi Poduction West,

Many British retailers, including supermarkets like Tesco and Morrissons, have their own supplier and ethical codes which prohibit the use of forced or slave labour in their supply chain. The problem here seems to arise from the convoluted supply chain related to the Thai fishing industry, which implicates middlemen, trawlers, cargo boats, fishmeal factories, CP Foods and the many retailers they sell their products to. In short, this means that it's extremely easy to turn a blind eye to abuses that occur out at sea -- despite many of these supermarkets being well aware of slavery on Thai fishing boats. This isn't the same as walking into a sweatshop to check on working conditions. To see what's actually happening on these boats, you'd have to travel for a few days out to the international, lawless waters where these trawlers are operating, and whose captains are generally armed and not interested in explaining their employment methods.

Again, and I'm sure Steve Trent from EJF can talk more about this, it also all comes down to cost. Now that shrimp is primarily farmed and not wild caught, the cost per kilo has gone way down for the consumer. These fishermen are disposable tools in a globalised, capitalist economy that profits from their exploitation.

Hi all,

Ineffective private sector and government monitoring and oversight of these fleets is a key aspect of the problem and, as Kate mentions, the low cost of shrimp and high consumption in rich countries is driving these abuses.

One thing EJF have found through our work is that the decimation of fish stocks in the waters surrounding Thailand - linked to the high demand for cheap seafood - is exacerbating the abuse of migrants in the industry by forcing boats to go further out into those lawless areas of the sea and for longer.

Hi Kate and Chris,

A couple of questions:

- in your opinions, what steps if taken by the supermarkets implicated would show a real commitment to change?

- what has the reaction to your investigation been like in Thailand so far?

Hi Laura,

The supermarkets need to hold their suppliers to account, but they also need to have complete visibility of their product supply chains. I believe that they already knew about slavery in this case, but chose to do nothing, for their own economic reasons, and that will always be the case. They are not going to announce the presence of slavery in product supply chains unless revelations like these force them to. So you are working against the free market model and gloablisation and capitalism, not easy things to change really. The retailers have always had a cynical desire for greater profits, at whatever cost they can get away with, the greater the public outcry the more likely the supermarkets will enact some kind of change, albeit reluctantly.
That change should not been mealy mouthed programs or pledges but use their financial leverage to push reforms down the supply chains. Track the raw materials used in their products, force the legalisation and registration of the vast migrant workforce in Thailand that props up their seafood export industry, push the Thai authorities to prosecute those responsible for trafficking and the labour abuses. it is a very complex issue.

It may be a bit early to see what the reaction in Thailand will be, although there are some worrying developments recently regarding the military junta's attitude towards illegal migrants in Thailand. Please see http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/migrants-flee-thai-instability for more details.

Caroline Bannock asks by email: 'How much do you think supermarkets are aware before this report?'

This is a great question. In my discussions with supermarkets it has usually been the made clear by representatives that they don't know. But now? It would be hard to miss this Guardian expose; there are the reports by the United Nations which back up the Guardians findings; those of the International Labour Organisation; those of EJF and local organisations...can any of the major retailers really say that they don't know now?

Do we know that the trash fish is only used in local shrimp production? Many products around the world contain fishmeal including farm animal feed and pet food.

Hi Joe,

You're right - trash fish is used in loads of items, from make-up to animal feed for pig, fish and chicken farming - as well as fish sauces and pet food, so the impact is far greater than just the prawns we eat in the West.