Slavery in our Food

From anguish to action

I sat on it for a whole year.  My specialist had recommended I eat oily fish every week for my CFS; and I knew there weren’t any Fairtrade fish brands.  It just seemed too hard.

But then, I thought, I should at least try!  So I wrote to the two brands whose fish I was buying (Sealord and Brunswick) and asked them: what do you know about forced labour in your supply chains?

Both wrote back promptly with excellent and detailed responses!  Praise God!  It turned out I ‘just happened’ to have written to two of the best companies there are.  I’ve always loved research so, encouraged by their responses, I started making lists of common fish brands on online shopping websites and, sector by sector, asked them about their supply chains.  I learned to ask about fishing vessels and processing factories, and was stunned at the lengths of some supply-chains (especially petfood!).  I combed through certification documents and was amazed to learn that Sealord had chosen a tuna supplier specifically because they were carrying out audits on fishing vessels thousands of kilometres out at sea. I learned that slavery is rife in the fishing industry.  More than 128 000 people are believed to be enslaved on fishing vessels at any one time.  Others are forced to work in fish processing factories, where you will also find many children: their small fingers are handy for packing sardines into tins or peeling prawns.

Some people get caught up in this by people taking advantage of their hopes for a better life.  I think often of a Cambodian subsistence rice farmer named Lang Long.  He was struggling to feed all his siblings, so leapt at the chance to take up a better-paying job in the construction industry in Thailand.  But when he got there he was forced onto a fishing boat where he worked for three years, sold from one boat to another, chained at the neck whenever other boats were near, until the Catholic charity Stella Maris finally bought him and helped him rehabilitate.  Others, like a Thai man named Asorasak Thamma, were simply taken opportunistically.  He went to a brothel looking for a girl, was given a spiked drink, and woke up to find the room he was in was swaying: he’d been carried onto a boat and was already beyond sight of land.  In his case he was able to escape after a few months, but he ended up far from home and it was several years before his family even knew he was alive.

Over time some of the stories I was reading gave me literal nightmares (and these days I really limit my exposure to them), but I also found the research so encouraging: a decent number of brands were going to considerable lengths to eliminate slavery from their supply chains.

My husband, Martin, and I started to pray about how we could share what I’d learned more widely, and in 2018 we launched Just Kai with a stand at The Justice Conference.  We hadn’t expected I’d be working on that stand due to my substantial health issues, but I woke on the morning of the conference feeling my body had really changed.  I went in as well, and spent 8am to 8pm talking to people about slavery in food, then went in to church the following day (still in a wheelchair) to thank God for my healing.

Since then Just Kai has grown to an organisation with around ten volunteers and, whilst it turns out my healing was only partial, I have remained considerably stronger and work on the project about six hours a week.

Slavery in food supply chains today

Modern slavery is a huge problem in our world today, affecting around 50 million people at any one time—41 000 of them in Australia.  These people are sometimes physically prevented from leaving their jobs; other times they have their passports confiscated or they are kept trapped by threats of physical violence.  They’re not always sold (although that is common) and are sometimes even paid some wages: the defining factors are that they are working against their will and cannot leave.

We most commonly hear about the 6.3 million people who are enslaved in the sex trade, but another 8 million people are enslaved producing physical goods for sale.  They’re mining the minerals that go into our electronics, catching the fish we eat, and working in factories making our clothes.  It can be shocking to think that the people who make our stuff are doing it against their will, but it also gives us an opportunity.  If we choose to buy slave-free goods, those slave-free businesses can expand, plus the market for slave-produced goods will wither.  In addition, poverty is one of the major drivers of slavery: choosing to buy goods where the workers are reasonably paid leads to less slavery, and less child labour as well.

Alongside those people, around 152 million children are in child labour, mostly working in agriculture.  These are not simply kids with after school jobs: they do work that interferes with either their education or their physical or emotional development.  The children who work on tea plantations in Kenya or hazelnut orchards in Türkiye (Turkey) are working instead of going to school; the kids who grow cocoa in West Africa often also have spinal damage caused by carrying loads too heavy for their young bodies.

In Australia, the goods most likely to have slavery in their supply chains are (in order) electronics, garments, solar panels, textiles, and fish.  Cocoa is also at high risk of being produced with child labour; tea, coffee, nuts, tomatoes and palm oil also have high rates of either forced labour, child labour, or both.

KnowTheChain.org is already doing excellent work on slavery in electronics; Baptist World Aid’s Ethical Fashion Guide tackles the garment sector.  Just Kai addresses slavery in the supply chains of food.  We:

• raise awareness of the issues;
• identify and promote brands already checking for forced labour and child labour in their supply chains;
• lobby certifications to raise their human welfare standards;
• lobby and advise a handful of food companies;
• lobby the New Zealand government to implement modern slavery legislation (something Australia already has).

Our main work is producing resources that go onto our website (justkai.org.nz) and onto Instagram and Facebook (@justkainz).  I also speak at churches and community organisations as I’m able, and we’ve had a stand at a number of ethical and sustainable festivals.  We’ve produced buying guides for a number of food sectors, and produce seasonal guides each Christmas and Easter.  Our most recent work has been producing a ‘morning tea guide’ (covering tea, coffee, sugar, hot chocolate, cordial, and biscuits) that we’re hoping will be used by churches.

One thing I’m particularly keen to communicate is just how bad things are in the fishing industry.  The Australian domestic fishing industry has very low rates of slavery, but even domestic fish can have an international supply chain. Most Australian-farmed prawns, for example, are sent overseas for peeling, where they’re often processed in poorly regulated ‘peeling sheds’ in which both forced and child labour are common.  Fish farmed in Australia is also generally fed on feed that includes fish meal and oil made from low-value wild-caught fish—another risk-point for forced labour.

And, when it comes to imported fish, much of the fish that goes into petfood is low-value imports— and you’d be surprised how much ‘beef-flavoured’ pet food has fish on the ingredients list!  Slavery is also common in the supply chains of fish caught in distant-water fisheries, notably tuna and squid.  To save fuel, companies often park fishing vessels in these fishing grounds for up to four years at a stretch, sending another vessel out to them from time to time to drop off supplies and bring back the fish—a situation that lends itself to forced labour as fishers have no options to leave.

What can we do?

Modern slavery is a huge issue which can only be solved by tackling it from many angles.  Fundamentally, it’s an issue of the human heart, and won’t be solved without God transforming the people who are benefitting by exploiting others.  I think often of Micah 6:9-16.  It comes straight after the famous verse:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God? 

In the following verses the prophet Micah lays into the people because they are using unjust weights and measures at the market: effectively telling people something costs one price, but charging another to their own benefit.

The modern slavery we’re seeing today feels a lot like that: people like Lang Long, told they’d get a well-paying job to help their families, only to find they’re not being paid at all.  We’re not the ones exploiting those people, but we still benefit from there exploitation by the artificially low prices we pay for many goods.  How can we step out of that situation?

Or I think about the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37, in which I feel that Jesus is saying that our neighbour is anyone we come across who needs our help.  When we buy cocoa or coffee, our path crosses the kids at the other end of the supply chain, whose futures are being stunted as they work to keep their families afloat.  How can we help them?

One thing we all can do is buy slave-free products as we are able.  The extent to which we each can do this will vary, but look for Rainforest Alliance or Fairtrade logos when you’re buying tea, coffee, and chocolate in particular.  You might be surprised how many affordable products you find!  Kmart own-brand seasonal chocolate, for example, has been Rainforest Alliance certified for some years now, as are KitKats, Milo, and much of the Woolworths own-brand range!  We can also encourage our churches to buy the morning tea brands listed in our guide.

Fish is harder, as there aren’t any consumer-facing certifications to look for, but Brunswick sardines, Huon fresh and frozen salmon, Sealord frozen fish and both John West and Woolworths tinned salmon are all slave-free.  If you’re buying processed wild-caught Australian prawns, ask the brand if they have their prawns processed by Thai Union: they don’t use peeling sheds.  Fish oil supplements are another risky area, but Blackmores has gone to significant lengths to reduce slavery in their supply chains, as have Purina, which owns a number of petfood brands.

Some people will feel God is calling them to do more.  If this is you, some things you could consider might be:

• lobby the government to strengthen the modern slavery legislation you have.  Thus far it has identified very few cases of modern slavery in company supply chains, and there is a lot of concern the commissioners’ powers are too weak;
• if your favourite brand of coffee or chocolate isn’t independently certified slave-free, ask them to switch to certified suppliers.  And if your favourite is certified, write to them and thank them for taking that step;
• talk to other people about these issues.  I find awareness of these things is often low, but when people learn about them they’re really interested.  My dentist was recently really interested to hear about all the work Nutella is doing to remove child labour from their hazelnut supply chain!

If you’d like help with getting started on any of those things I’d be happy to chat: my email is heather@justkai.org.nz. (See also MannaCast ep. 27). Together we can make a big impact on the lives of people who are currently trapped in terrible situations.

Heather Roberts is the founder of Just Kai. When she’s not writing and speaking about modern slavery in food, she loves riding her bike and swimming in the sea in Aotearoa, where she lives with her husband, Martin, and their friend, Sarah.