CAT FOOD AND SLAVERY

The dirty truth about the shrimp and "junk" fish species that go in to cat foods has been exposed very recently. The seafoods that end up in fish-flavored foods and treats come mainly from Thailand, whose fishing industry is poorly regulated and allows for a very dark sub-industry based on slavery and indentured servitude. The details are horrifying: kids lured from home and forced on to vessels for years at a time, with minimal sleep, little food, no medicine, no pay, beatings, and no way out. Desperately poor Cambodian men promised good jobs in Thailand and being held captive on tiny open-sea fishing vessels, and then getting thrown overboard when they turn sick, weak or rebellious.

The seas themselves are dying: pollution, plastics, over-fishing, dumping, temperature changes and habitat destruction are causing the world's fisheries to collapse. That, in and of itself, is reason not to buy fish-flavored foods. But now, with the new evidence we have of widespread slavery in the "junk" fish and shrimp supply chains, it is even harder to rationalise buying Fancy Feast for my cats.

Here are some links to articles on the subject:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/world/outlaw-ocean-thailand-fishing-sea-slaves-pets.html?_r=0

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-10/these-lawyers-want-you-to-know-slaves-may-be-feeding-your-cat

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/dec/16/enslaved-on-thai-fishing-boat-thought-i-would-die-there

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2015/11/nestl%C3%A9-finds-forced-labor-its-seafood-supply-chain