Revealed: Asian slave labour producing prawns for supermarkets in US, UK

Thai 'ghost ships' that enslave, brutalise and even kill workers are linked to global shrimp supply chain, Guardian investigation discovers

• Trafficked into slavery on Thai trawlers to catch food for prawns
• Thailand's seafood industry: state-sanctioned slavery?

Slaves forced to work for no pay for years at a time under threat of extreme violence are being used in Asia in the production of seafood sold by major US, British and other European retailers, the Guardian can reveal.

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.

Revealed: Asian slave labour producing prawns for supermarkets in US, UK

Given all the foods that are poisonous to eat long term and the social requirements of being a good human I have just realized that about all I can actually eat any longer is tree bark.

49 years down and 20 to go, and not one bit upset about it as the world that is coming, is one I no longer will wish to live in.

Retweeting a clever hashtag ought to get rid of this slavery problem. Or at least I can prove to my twitter friends how concerned I am.

Well,
Tesco name their sources on the packaging, and it is Thailand farms, I think it says renewable sources as well.
Tesco also have said in the past that they check their sources for quality, and proper working conditions in factories etc; so I would have thought that perhaps that's as far as they would go. I don't know about the rest of the supermarkets.
At least, now that people know the long story, they have the choice to buy or not.
It's a bit like the China syndrome, they had/have problems with poor working conditions, do you buy the products or not? In some cases do you have a choice if it's something you need?

Well we all have been so concerned with the plight of the Asian worker and their conditions of late, that we might stop tweeting about our new Nikes on our iPhones right?

Humans are enslaved, most won't know it, and the few that do have the recourse of not buying this

Sun, please super nova. If the HERO's won't come in then at least do that. This is too much. There are laws preventing people from saying what needs to be done. And something needs to BE DONE, not just what you buy.