FRANKFURT — A Burmese migrant worker is sold by traffickers as a slave to the owner of a Thai fishing boat. The catch of the boat is used to make fish meal to feed farmed shrimp. The shrimp wind up in supermarkets in the United States and Europe.
Issues of security and economics tend to attract the most attention at Group of 7 meetings. But when President Obama and other leaders of the nations in the group meet at the Bavarian spa resort of Schloss Elmau on June 7 and 8, one of the items on the agenda will be related to those Thai shrimp.
The leaders plan to discuss so-called supply chain standards — ways of ensuring that everyday products like food, electronics and jewelry do not come packaged with human misery as a hidden ingredient.
Abuses in the Thai fishing industry have been well documented and were the subject of hearings in the United States Congress in April. The Group of 7 countries — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — represent 45 percent of global economic output, which gives them considerable power to push for better working conditions not only for Thai fishing crews but also for miners in Democratic Republic of Congo and textile workers in Bangladesh.
Read the full story at the New York Times