Global Market and Slavery Chain
Modern slavery in fishing boats in Southeast Asian waters proves that the slavery of ancient times continues because of the global market’s demand for seafood and products for pet foods.
Investigative reports by international newspapers, including The Guardian, The New York Times and Associated Press, have found that many of the ingredients in pet food and seafood that are sold in the United States and Europe are being produced by cheap labor and slave labor from Thai fishing sectors.
The New York Times reported July 27 that much of pet food, such as canned cat and dog food, or food for poultry, livestock and farm-raised fish shipped and sold to United States comes from the waters off Thailand.
In May of this year, human trafficking in Southeast Asia gained international attention when more than 3,000 Rohingyan migrants from Burma and Bangladesh were left adrift by traffickers and smugglers in the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal, and several hundred bodies believed to be corpses of victims of human trafficking were found in Malaysia and Thailand in camps run by gangs and traffickers.
Thai and Malaysian officials’ responses to the mass grave discoveries disrupted trafficking patterns and led to additional abuses against Rohingyan and Bangladeshi migrants, as the traffickers pushed boats out to sea and denied survivors any resources.
Since 2012, more than 150,000 Rohingya have fled western Burma to escape persecution, and human traffickers in Burma and Bangladesh have bought and sold tens of thousands of them, duping them onto modern-day slave ships with promises of lucrative employment in Malaysia.