The disturbing link between the slave trade and the seafood you buy at the grocery store

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published 25 March 2015

Seafood sold at American retail and grocery giants like Walmart, Safeway, and Kroger may have been harvested by slaves, according to an investigative report by the Associated Press. The report recounts in chilling detail a slave operation on a small Indonesian island called Benjina, where hundreds of slaves, mostly from Myanmar, are kept in rusty cages, work 22-hour days, and are beaten into submission with "toxic stingray tails."

The AP tracked the seafood they harvested to global supply chains that link up with well-known American companies:

Tainted fish can wind up in the supply chains of some of America's major grocery stores, such as Kroger, Albertsons and Safeway; the nation's largest retailer, Wal-Mart; and the biggest food distributor, Sysco. It can find its way into the supply chains of some of the most popular brands of canned pet food, including Fancy Feast, Meow Mix, and Iams. It can turn up as calamari at fine dining restaurants, as imitation crab in a California sushi roll or as packages of frozen snapper relabeled with store brands that land on our dinner tables. [Associated Press]