And even fishmeal factory owners directly supplying CP doubt the veracity of these fishing logs. “I don’t think it’s 100% true,” said one factory owner in Songkhla. “That’s why I want to take my own boat out to spy on them [the trawlers].”
The Thai government also admits that a new scheme to register boats as legal and licensed is plagued by corruption and a lack of political willpower. Songkhla’s marine police told the Guardian that some fishing boat owners simply don’t comply when requested to register their foreign workers. An official tasked with the job confirmed this. “The biggest problem we face is the politicians in this area,” said the Thai fisheries department employee who was in the process of registering boats at port. “They own the fishing boats and some of them don’t want to be regulated. They have their own laws, their own regulations, that’s how they see it. They’re more powerful than we are, so it means we can’t really enforce the law.”
Thai law also prevents the authorities from curbing trafficking – for example, the Thai Royal Marine police are not allowed to patrol more than 12 miles from shore. “There are [slave] labourers out there in Indonesian and Malaysian waters who are being abused,” one high-ranking policeman told the Guardian. “But I can’t go there. I don’t have the authority. All I can do is pressure the boat owners. If I go [into international waters] I will get shot at by the [relevant] authorities.”
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Hidden camera footage of Thai trawler slaves.
The Guardian
Simon Funge-Smith, senior fishery officer at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Asia-Pacific regional office, says the Thai government has failed to adopt legislation to keep up with fishing industry practices. “Fishing has evolved from happening a few miles from shore to thousands of miles away, from being entirely crewed by nationals to a high dependence on migrant labour,” he says. “Relevant departments have been complacent or simply constrained by limited capacity to bring procedures up to speed, so even simple procedures like inspecting a vessel to check crewlists, passports or catches, may not take place on board.”
CP Foods says that it will cut fishmeal out of its prawnfeed by 2021, but until then it hopes to address trafficking by working with the Thai government to register these problem trawlers.