To ensure quality at a low price, Walmart shrimp is harvested by slaves held captive on Asian ships.

[kpete]

A six-month investigation has established that large numbers of men bought and sold like animals and held against their will on fishing boats off Thailand are integral to the production of prawns (commonly called shrimp in the US) sold in leading supermarkets around the world, including the top four global retailers: Walmart, Carrefour, Costco and Tesco.


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.

Fifteen migrant workers from Burma and Cambodia also told how they had been enslaved. They said they had paid brokers to help them find work in Thailand in factories or on building sites. But they had been sold instead to boat captains, sometimes for as little as £250.

"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."

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jun/10/supermarket-prawns-thailand-produced-slave-labour
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jul/30/supermarkets-thailand-prawn-slavery-seafood

[drm604]

1. Someone may point out that those links are nearly a year old, but here's a more recent link.

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/feb/18/thailand-failing-tackle-fishing-industry-slavery

Things are no better than they were a year ago. Am I being cynical if I ask why the media isn't screaming about this?

[yeoman6987]

4. I just can't see going to Walmart to buy shrimp

I get mine at Publix which hopefully has better standards.

[drm604]

5. The article mentions Walmart, Carrefour, Costco and Tesco as four of the major ones.

So it's possible that Publix is included. To be fair, if I'm reading the article correctly, and assuming it's accurate, the shrimp farmers don't directly use slaves. They buy their feed from companies that use slaves, so they may or may not have been aware. It's hard to say who along the supply chain was aware. By the time the shrimp get to the retailer, they may be several companies removed from the feed suppliers.

That said, once the story came out, the supermarkets should have acted to determine if their shrimp was involved in this. Maybe they have, I have no idea, but I doubt it.

[d_r]

7. buy American wild caught shrimp

Hopefully Atlantic coast not gulf.

The shrimp still has country of origin on it. After the ruling about beef and now with the TPP who knows if that will last.

Publix has both asian shrimp and wild caught USA shrimp. The USA costs a little more. It is worth it.

[NaturalHigh]

2. The modern-day equivalent of galley slaves.

Terrible. At least this story is finally getting some attention.

[TacoD]

3. Also Costco (nt)

[d_r]

8. Costco

has both wild caught USA shrimp and imported Asian shrimp. The USA costs more but worth it.

[d_r]

6. Also

* and I'm not saying that this is as bad as the slave labor, I'm saying it adds to the problem *

Those Thai "shrimp farms" are damned up swamps and wetlands that are causing grave environmental damage.