SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand — Poor migrant workers and children are being
sold to factories in Thailand and forced to peel shrimp that ends up
in global supply chains, including those of Wal-Mart and Red Lobster,
the world's largest retailer and the world's largest seafood
restaurant chain, an Associated Press investigation found.

At the Gig Peeling Factory, nearly 100 Burmese laborers were trapped,
most working for almost nothing. They spent 16 hours a day with their
aching hands in ice water, ripping the guts, heads, tails and shells
off shrimp. One girl was so tiny she had to stand on a stool to reach
the peeling table. Some workers had been there for months, even years.
Always, someone was watching.

"They didn't let us rest," said Eae Hpaw, 16, her arms a patchwork of
scars from shrimp-related infections and allergies. "We stopped
working around 7 in the evening. We would take a shower and sleep.
Then we would start again around 3 in the morning."

More than 2,000 trapped fishermen have been freed this year as a
result of an ongoing Associated Press investigative series into
slavery in the Thai seafood industry. The reports also have led to a
dozen arrests, millions of dollars' worth of seizures and proposals
for new federal laws.

Pervasive human trafficking has helped turn Thailand into one of the
world's biggest shrimp providers. Despite repeated promises by
businesses and government to clean up the country's $7 billion seafood
export industry, abuses persist, fueled by corruption and complicity
among police and authorities. Arrests and prosecutions are rare. Raids
can end up sending migrants without proper paperwork to jail, while
owners go unpunished.

"I was shocked after working there a while, and I realized there was
no way out," said Tin Nyo Win, 22, another former Gig factory worker,
who routinely peeled 175 pounds of shrimp with his wife for just $4 a
day.

Hundreds of shrimp-peeling sheds are hidden in plain sight in Samut
Sakhon, an hour outside Bangkok, some with slaves locked inside. Last
month, AP journalists followed and filmed trucks loaded with freshly
peeled shrimp from the abusive Gig shed to major Thai exporting
companies. They also traced similar connections from another factory
raided six months earlier, and interviewed more than two dozen workers
from both sites. In all, several companies received tainted shrimp,
including Thai Union, one of the world's biggest seafood companies,
and a subsidiary.

The farmed shrimp can mix with different batches of seafood as it is
packaged, branded and shipped, making it impossible to determine where
any individual piece was peeled. But because at least some of the Thai
exporters' shrimp was processed by forced labor, all of it is
considered associated with slavery, according to United Nations and
U.S. standards.

U.S. customs records show the shrimp made its way into the supply
chains of major U.S. food stores and retailers such as Wal-Mart,
Kroger, Whole Foods, Dollar General and Petco, along with restaurants
such as Red Lobster and Olive Garden. It also entered supply chains
for some of America's best-known seafood brands and pet foods,
including Chicken of the Sea and Fancy Feast. AP reporters went to
supermarkets in all 50 states and found shrimp products from supply
chains tainted with forced labor.

Import and export records from Europe and Asia are confidential, but
the Thai companies receiving shrimp tracked by the AP all say they
ship to those continents. AP reporters in England, Germany, Italy and
Ireland found several brands sourced from Thailand in supermarkets in
those countries.

In this Monday, Nov. 9, 2015 photo, children and teenagers sit
together to be registered by officials during a raid on a shrimp shed
in Samut Sakhon, Thailand. Abuse is common in Samut Sakhon, which
attracts workers from some of the world’s poorest countries, mostly
from Myanmar. An International Labor Organization report estimated
10,000 migrant children aged 13 to 15 work in the city. Another U.N.
agency study found nearly 60 percent of Burmese laborers toiling in
its seafood processing industry were victims of forced labor.© AP
Photo/Dita Alangkara In this Monday, Nov. 9, 2015 photo, children and
teenagers sit together to be registered by officials during a raid on
a shrimp shed in Samut Sakhon, Thailand. Abuse is common in Samut
Sakhon, which attracts…

The businesses that responded to AP's findings condemned the practices
that lead to these conditions. Many asked for details and said they
were launching investigations.

"I want to eliminate this," said Dirk Leuenberger, CEO of Aqua Star, a
leading seafood suppler. "I think it's disgusting that it's even
remotely part of my business."

Wal-Mart, Red Lobster and other companies said they strive to ensure
the shrimp they receive is not tainted by slavery.

"As the world's largest seafood restaurant, we know the important role
we play in setting and ensuring compliance with seafood industry
standards, and we're committed to doing our part to make sure the
seafood we buy and serve is sourced in a way that is ethical,
responsible and sustainable," Red Lobster said in a statement.

Red Lobster, Whole Foods and H-E-B Supermarkets were among the
companies that said they were confident — based on assurances from
their Thai supplier — that their particular shrimp was not associated
with abusive factories. That Thai supplier admits it hadn't known
where it was getting all its shrimp and sent a note outlining
corrective measures to U.S. businesses demanding answers last week.

Responding to U.S. business demands for answers to AP's findings, Thai
Union CEO Thiraphong Chansiri acknowledged "that illicitly sourced
product may have fraudulently entered its supply chain."

Susan Coppedge, the U.S. State Department's new anti-trafficking
ambassador, said problems persist because offenders aren't held
accountable — though the U.S. itself hasn't punished Thailand, an
important Southeast Asian ally. She said American consumers "can speak
through their wallets" by avoiding slave-produced products.

Thailand passed laws this year to crack down on fishing-industry
abuses and is working to register undocumented migrant workers, who
often are lured from home by brokers with promises of good-paying
jobs. They are then sold to shrimp sheds such as the Gig factory,
where Tin Nyo Win and his wife learned they would have to work off
what was considered their combined worth: $830, an insurmountable
debt.

"There have been some flaws in the laws, and we have been closing
those gaps," said M.L. Puntarik Smiti, the Thai Labor Ministry's
permanent secretary.

Critics argue, however, that changes have been largely cosmetic.
Former slaves repeatedly described how police took them into custody
and then sold them to agents who trafficked them again. They say
police are paid to look the other way and that officers frequently do
not understand labor laws.

Tin Nyo Win escaped the Gig factory and was helped by a labor rights
group, which pressured authorities to act. On Nov. 9, dozens of
officers and military troops burst into the shed. Frightened Burmese
workers huddled on the dirty concrete floor. One young mother
breast-fed a 5-month-old baby, while children were taken to a corner.

But no one at the shed was arrested for human trafficking. Instead,
migrants with papers, including seven children, were sent back there
to work. Ten undocumented children were taken from their parents and
put into a shelter. Twenty-one other illegal workers were detained,
including Tin Nyo Win and his wife, but all have since been moved to
government shelters for human-trafficking victims.

Local authorities have been ordered to reinvestigate the factory,
which is now closed. Police said workers were moved to another shed
linked to the same owners. A Gig owner reached by phone declined to
comment.

Meanwhile, the AP informed labor rights investigators who work closely
with police about another shed where workers said they were being held
against their will. It is being examined.

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