Forced labor may put fish sticks in your school
On the high seas hundreds of miles north of the Falkland Islands, a group of Western reporters boarded a Chinese fishing ship where deckhands pulled them into a dark hallway begging for help, saying they were being held against their will.
While in Uruguay, these same reporters unearthed data showing that for much of the past decade, one dead body per month has been dropped off fishing ships, mostly Chinese, on the docks in Montevideo, often with signs of severe neglect or abuse.
For four years, these reporters, from a journalism organization called The Outlaw Ocean Project, quietly, always with captains’ permission, boarded Chinese fishing ships on the high seas and in national waters all over the world – near the Galapagos Islands, near the sea border with North Korea, along the coast of West Africa – for the sake of inspecting working conditions.
Journalists investigated Chinese seafood operations
They uncovered myriad abuses, including forced labor, debt bondage, wage withholding, excessive working hours, physical abuse, passport confiscation, the denial of medical care and even deaths.
And the abuse doesn’t end at sea. As part of this same investigation, reporters discovered something even bigger and darker in China’s seafood processing plants. By using cellphone footage from inside the plants, deploying secret surveillance at factories and ports, and mining company documents and trade data, the reporters found that much of the seafood being exported to the United States and Europe from Chinese plants is processed by Uyghur workers – a highly repressed minority population whom the Chinese government detains in “reeducation” camps and forces to work in factories throughout the country.
The United States forbids the import of products made with forced labor, and it has specific laws prohibiting the import of any products made using Uyghur labor.
Much of the seafood consumed in the US comes from China
These new revelations about the global seafood industry have serious implications for American consumers and policymakers because more than 80% of the seafood consumed by Americans is imported, and the largest portion of that is caught by Chinese ships or processed in China’s factories.
By some estimates, half of the fish sticks served in American public schools are processed in China.
Fish tainted by Chinese forced labor is even showing up in military base cafeterias, federal prison canteens and veterans homes’ dining halls, paid for by federal and state tax dollars. Such seafood also lines the shelves of our major grocery stores, including Albertsons, Costco, Kroger and Walmart.
Even fish marketed as “locally caught” is tainted by these labor and human rights problems associated with China because much of the fish coming out of U.S. waters and onto U.S.-flagged ships is frozen, sent to China for processing, refrozen and shipped back to America. Like fish from Chinese vessels, many of the workers processing U.S.caught seafood are also Uyghurs under state-sponsored forced labor regimes, meaning importation of this catch is also in clear violation of U.S. law.
Solving problems within seafood industry supply chains is not easy because fishing ships are far from shore, almost always in motion, tough to spotcheck, flagged to other nations and crewed mostly by poorer people from the global south who do these jobs with no contracts.
Even so, there are things that we as American consumers can do:
First, contact your senators and representatives to ask whether the fish bought by the U.S. government with your tax dollars is caught and processed in China. If it is, insist they consider sourcing it from local fishers and processors. Demand these lawmakers to also impose stricter rules on importers of seafood, requiring them to collect necessary information about the conditions on these ships and factories.
Second, review this interactive www.theoutlawocean.com/investigations/china-the-superpower-of-seafood/discussion/ – to find information about which seafood brands have responded to these reports by plainly stating that until China allows real oversight of its ships and factories, they will ensure that none of their seafood comes from China. Avoid buying fish from companies that ignore these reports or fail to disclose the origin and processing location of their product.
Finally, support organizations that do the hard work of revealing such crimes and those working to prevent forced labor and human rights abuses all over the world. A handful of nonprofit groups monitor not just whether the oceans are running out of fish but also the human rights concerns among the 50 million people who work at sea.
In the past several decades, other industries like those that produce socalled sweatshop garments, blood diamonds and fair-trade coffee have had their moment of reckoning.
That time has come for seafood.