January 30, 2024 — The Southern Shrimp Alliance asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security this week to add eight seafood processors in China to a list of companies blocked from importing to the U.S. because of their use of forced labor.
In a Jan. 29 letter the SSA points to evidence that red shrimp caught off Argentina is shipped to China, and processed in plants in Shandong province where members of China’s ethnic Uyghur work under forced labor conditions.
The shrimp alliance in particular cites reporting on Uyghur labor by the Outlaw Ocean Project, a nonprofit investigative journalism group founded by maritime reporter Ian Urbina.
“The Outlaw Ocean Project recently documented that members of the Uyghur minority were forcibly moved out of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) to Shandong and coerced to work in seafood processing facilities, including shrimp,” according to a statement from the SSA.