The cheap frozen or precooked shrimp you buy at stores like Walmart and Costco are cheap in part because of the Thai shrimp industry's
reliance on slave labor, an investigation by
The Guardian found:
The investigation found that the world's largest prawn farmer, the Thailand-based Charoen Pokphand (CP) Foods, buys fishmeal, which it feeds to its farmed prawns, from some suppliers that own, operate or buy from fishing boats manned with slaves.
Men who have managed to escape from boats supplying CP Foods and other companies like it told the Guardian of horrific conditions, including 20-hour shifts, regular beatings, torture and execution-style killings. Some were at sea for years; some were regularly offered methamphetamines to keep them going. Some had seen fellow slaves murdered in front of them. [...]
"I thought I was going to die," said Vuthy, a former monk from Cambodia who was sold from captain to captain. "They kept me chained up, they didn't care about me or give me any food … They sold us like animals, but we are not animals – we are human beings."
Investigators traced boatloads of trash fish to the plants that turned it into fish meal and then to CP Foods, which uses the fish meal to feed farmed shrimp. CP Foods even admits that its suppliers use slave labor, but claims that it doesn't know the extent of the abomination in its own supply chain. Which is information you'd think you might try to find out if you didn't think slavery was a reasonable trade for cheap shrimp. Several of the large grocery chains that buy CP Foods shrimp, including Walmart and Costco, issued statements promising action on the issue.