![]() ![]() The Thai Frozen Foods Association lists about 50 registered shrimp sheds in the country. Supply chains are so complicated that, on any given day, buyers may not know exactly where the shrimp comes from. Unable to keep up with demand, exporters get their supply from peeling sheds that are sometimes nothing more than crude garages adjacent to the boss’s house. The European Union issued a warning earlier this year that tripled seafood import tariffs, and is expected to decide next month whether to impose an outright ban.Ĭonsumers enjoy the convenience of dumping shrimp straight from freezer to skillet, the result of labor-intensive peeling and cleaning. ![]() ![]() State Department, which cited complicity by Thai officials. It has been blacklisted for the past two years by the U.S. The Southeast Asian country is one of the worst human trafficking hubs on earth. Thailand quickly dominated the market and now sends nearly half of its supply to the U.S. Once a luxury reserved for special occasions, it became cheap enough for stir-fries and scampis when Asian farmers started growing it in ponds three decades ago. Shrimp is the most-loved seafood in the U.S., with Americans downing 1.3 billion pounds every year, or about 4 pounds per person. Tin Nyo Win and his wife, Mi San, were cursed for not peeling fast enough and called “cows” and “buffalos.” They were allowed to go outside for food only if one of them stayed behind as insurance against running away.īut escaping was all they could think about. Entire families labored side-by-side at rows of stainless steel counters piled high with tubs of shrimp. Young children ran barefoot through suffocating dorm rooms. Inside the large warehouse, toilets overflowed with feces, and the putrid smell of raw sewage wafted from an open gutter just outside the work area. Many said they were launching investigations when told their supply chains were linked to people held against their will in sheds like the Gig factory, which sat behind a gate off a busy street, between railroad tracks and a river. The businesses that responded condemned the practices that lead to these conditions. AP reporters went to supermarkets in all 50 states and found shrimp products from supply chains tainted with forced labor.Įuropean and Asian import and export records are confidential, but the Thai companies receiving shrimp tracked by the AP all say they ship to Europe and Asia as well. It also entered the supply chains of some of America’s best-known seafood brands and pet foods, including Chicken of the Sea and Fancy Feast, which are sold in grocery stores from Safeway and Schnucks to Piggly Wiggly and Albertsons. food stores and retailers such as Wal-Mart, Kroger, Whole Foods, Dollar General and Petco, along with restaurants such as Red Lobster and Olive Garden. customs records show the shrimp made its way into the supply chains of major U.S. They also traced similar connections from another factory raided six months earlier, and interviewed more than two dozen workers from both sites. customs records and Thai industry reports, tracked it globally. Last month, AP journalists followed and filmed trucks loaded with freshly peeled shrimp from the Gig shed to major Thai exporting companies and then, using U.S. If something ends up going wrong, we’re going to die.’” “I was shocked after working there a while, and I realized there was no way out,” said Tin Nyo Win, 22, who has a baby face and teeth stained red from chewing betel nut. Another man ended up peeling shrimp there after breaking free from an equally brutal factory. One woman had been working at Gig for eight years. All three sheds held 50 to 100 people each, many locked inside.Īs Tin Nyo Win soon found out for himself, there’s no easy escape. The AP found one factory that was enslaving dozens of workers, and runaway migrants led rights groups to the Gig shed and a third facility. Hundreds of shrimp peeling sheds are hidden in plain sight on residential streets or behind walls with no signs in Samut Sakhon, a port town an hour outside Bangkok. ![]()
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