Slave Labour & Human Trafficking-the parts of the pet food industry they don’t want you to know about
We’ve all seen the articles, stories and instagram posts about the dangers of certain dog foods — an unhealthy digestive system, heart disease and malnutrition to mention a few. But perhaps what remains unmentioned is the danger certain dog foods pose to the lives of men and young boy’s enslaved within the fishing industry.
Modern slavery exists within the fishing industry for the same reason we observe it in any other area, to reduce labour costs in an industry which is labour intensive. Men and young boys, predominantly migrants from Burma, Loas and Cambodia, are routinely recruited through deception by assurance of well paid jobs or from offers of transport across borders. Once aboard, many of the fishers are subjugated by means of physical violence, confinement and the withholding of wages and identification documents. Recounts from many fishermen document the use of electrical shock treatments, sleep deprivation and drugs, in attempts to keep the fishers compliant. In 2005, hundreds of boys and young men were rescued in the Indonesian town of Benjina, where the workers had been enslaved on Thai shipping trawlers for several years. Between shipping expeditions, many of the men were incarcerated in iron cages on the beaches to prevent attempted escapes. Commonly, fishers are perceived as being owned by the captain, which permits them to be sold onto other ships or into other industries at the end of their contract, keeping them captive for many years at a time. Fishers are only liberated from these forced working conditions, either at the hands of human rights groups or through attempted escape. And whilst some fishers can swim, many cannot, with escape attempts often resulting in drowning. If they are caught attempting to escape, they are often beaten or murdered, with 59% of trafficked migrant workers, who were interviewed on Thai Trawlers for a NYT article, disclosing that they were witness to at least one murder of a fellow worker on the board. Vannack Anan Prum, a Cambodian sculptor who was enslaved on a Thai fishing trawler, recalls in his memoir ‘The Dead Eye and the Deep Blue Sea’, that when jumping ship in attempt to escape his captors, his ‘rescuers’ sold him into slavery on a palm oil plantation on the Malaysian coast. Eventually a Cambodian human rights group were able to extricate Prum and after five years in slavery he returned to his wife and child.
Whilst the problem of criminality within the fishing industry may seem far away, on other shores, it’s not. The ‘recruiting’ country may well be primarily in Indonesia and Philippines and the transit states where fishermen move from ship to ship may be in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan but the destinations for fish caught on these vessels largely end up in the European Union and the United States. So how does this relate to the pet industry and in particular, dog food? When dog or cat food contains fish meal, raw fish or fish oil there is a likely chance that it is a product of ‘trash’ fish. ‘Trash’ fish is defined as fish that is unpalatable or too small for the human market and because it is a largely unsourced fish, its origins are unknown, making it difficult to regulate the supply chain and therefore allows illegal activities such as slave labour to flourish. The Thai fishing industry is notorious for being one of the most abusive and destructive economic sectors in the world and on average, that industry exports £100 million of seafood to the UK a year and as one of the top suppliers of fish meal and fish oil, its likely that fish oil and fish meal in the dog food you see in super markets are a product of the Thai fishing industry. Unfortunately when pet owners read ’Additional Omega 3 fatty acids — great for your dog’s skin and coat’ on the tins of their dog food, what fails to be addressed is that its feasible to believe that these fatty acids are a product of slavery, ‘pirate’ fishing, corruption and criminality. In 2015, Mars Inc, an American multinational manufacturer of confectionery and pet food ended up in a lawsuit after they were found to have 90,000 cartons of dog and cat food that was produced in a cannery who’s fish supply came from a boat that had recently been exposed in a New York Time’s article for slave labour, human trafficking and the murder of workers on board when they became sick or non compliant. The brands this company supplied fish to include but are not limited to Purina, Iams and John West Tuna. It’s also important to recognise, that this problem is not isolated to Thailand. In 2018 a fishing trawler, which was registered to Ireland, and at the time of arrest was fishing off of the Western Coast of Ireland, was convicted of human rights abuse, unpaid wages, forced labour and human trafficking.
So how do we, as a collective, using cross disciplinary action, ensure that the fish we eat and the fish we serve to our pets is sourced ethically and without the contamination of slavery, human trafficking and murder?
What can YOU do?
When buying dog food, cat food or seafood for yourself, prioritise buying from brands which are transparent about their suppliers. Whilst suppliers may be unable to be to trace 100% of their supply chain down to a plant level, what they can do is show transparency about what they are doing to build social accountability and the specific efforts they are undergoing to protect workers in their supply chain from forced labour and human trafficking. When we, as the consumer, realise our power to demand information about our foods supply chain, brands and suppliers will be incentivised through custom to protect their workers and keep criminality out of their supply chain.
What can brands, suppliers and manufacturers do?
Pet food and food confectionary manufactures must map their supply chains with increasing scrutiny. Science Advances published details of a five point framework for supply chains, aimed to screen the supply chain for points of vulnerability. Firstly the product would be screened to determine the raw products country of origin and then that countries stance on forced labour could be addressed. A template would then map the supply chain before using an algorithm to estimate the risk of slave labour at each point of that supply chain. As a final step, workers aboard the ship and within canneries would then be interviewed to collect proof of what protective regulations are in place to protect them within the workplace.
What can researchers do?
By leveraging the power of growing data sets and artificial intelligence, researches are able to detect where slave labour is occurring out at sea, with increasing accuracy. A team from Environmental Market Solutions Lab, took the behaviours of 22 vessels, which they had confirmed prior to the research to be operating using slave labour and compared these behaviours to vessels that were confirmed to be operating legally with no forced working conditions, to determine which behaviour were indicative of illegal behaviour. They found that boats convicted of slave labour and human trafficking, tended to spend longer periods of time on the high seas, travelled farther from Ports and spent more hours per day fishing than observed with other vessels. Once these behaviours had been labelled as indicators of slave labour, the Environmental Market Solutions Lab team along with the assistance of Google data scientists used machine learning techniques to call attention to thousands of other vessels displaying these indicators. Using predictive models, vessels that are likely to become engaged with illegal activities can also be identified. This technique can not only be used for slave labour but also human trafficking, illegal fishing, zone abuses and the transportation of firearms.
What can governments do?
It is vital that governments in the countries origin where recruitment happens, stick to their duty of enforcing laws that keep people safe from such vulnerabilities. Without the enforcement of laws at the beginning of the supply chain, consumer and supplier initiates to prevent criminality are futile. There also needs to be consequential deterrents in play and when offences are uncovered, they need to be met with increasingly successful prosecutions.
Slave labour and illegal working conditions remain a pervasive problem in many industries, and like many industries, the fishing industries supply chain covers a global region, making enforcement of regulations and working standards complex. But what remains true, is that awareness leads to knowledge, and knowledge in the hands of the consumer results in action.
If you’d like to explore more information around the criminality involved with the fishing industry, Spyglass have an interactive dashboard displaying all convicted global events.
