Page 129 - How to Be a Conscious Eater - Making Food Choices That Are Good for You

no sleep. Often there’s just one meal per day, of questionable
nutritional quality and food safety.
Sadly, seafood is by no means the only sector of the food
and agriculture supply chain plagued by inhumane work prac-
tices. An estimated 21 million people are victims of forced labor
around the world, and 3.5 million of them work in some form
of agriculture (which includes fishing and forestry). Although
the problem is much worse in developing countries, neither
the United States nor Europe is entirely virtuous. In 2016, the
nonprofit group KnowTheChain reported that one in twenty
farmworkers in the United States is working against his or
her own will. Most of them are migrant workers from Mexico,
Guatemala, and Haiti, the report says, and they receive little
or no pay.
Fishing is particularly susceptible to shady behavior,
though, because once a boat has left a harbor and dipped past
the horizon, no one is watching. Part of the reason this is so
problematic in Southeast Asian waters is the larger issue of
“illegal, unreported, and unregulated” (IUU) fishing—the des-
ignations of suspicious fishing. It’s estimated that one in five
fish and seafood products worldwide is IUU. What’s on the list
of illegal practices? Taking more fish than is permitted. Taking
the wrong size, or taking them in the wrong season. Catching
fish from another country’s waters without consent. And slav-
ery. Definitely not legal—anywhere in the world.
After consumers, restaurateurs,
retailers, and government officials
were left shell-shocked when an
exposé by The Guardian first came
out in 2014, we quickly yearned
for solutions. Headlines like “How
to find shrimp that’s not produced
by slave labor in Thailand” certainly

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