Thread: Nestle sued in the US over Thai fish products

New York (AFP) - Swiss food giant Nestle is being sued in the United States for allegedly knowingly allowing its Fancy Feast cat food to contain fish from a Thai supplier that uses slave labor.

Pet food buyers who filed the class action lawsuit on Thursday in US federal court in Los Angeles seek to represent all California consumers of Fancy Feast who would not have purchased the product had they known it had ties to slave labor.

According to the lawsuit, Nestle works with Thai Union Frozen Products PCL to import more than 28 million pounds (13 million kilograms) of seafood-based pet food for top brands sold in the United States, and that some of the ingredients in those products came from slave labor.

Men and boys, often trafficked from Thailand's poorer neighbors Myanmar and Cambodia, are sold to fishing boat captains who need crews aboard their ship, the complaint said.

It spoke of shifts of up to 20 hours a day with little or no pay, and beatings or even death if the work is deemed unsatisfactory.

"By hiding this from public view, Nestle has effectively tricked millions of consumers into supporting and encouraging slave labor on floating prisons," said Steve Berman, managing partner of the Hagens Berman law firm.

"It's a fact that the thousands of purchasers of its top-selling pet food products would not have bought this brand had they known the truth -- that hundreds of individuals are enslaved, beaten or even murdered in the production of its pet food."

Nestle lists protection of human rights as one of its Corporate Business Principles.

But "Nestle has failed to uphold its responsibility to ensure the absence of slave labor in its supply chains -- and even worse, Nestle not only supported these human rights violations, but forced consumers to unknowingly do the same."

Nestle accused of using slave-caught fish in cat food

Very few standards in such things seem to apply at nestle.

Enjoy your coffee, George Clooney.

ZURICH — The Swiss food giant Nestle on Friday rejected allegations that it had knowingly allowed its Fancy Feast cat food to contain fish from a Thai supplier suspected of using slave labour.

"Forced labour has no place in our supply chain," the company told AFP in an email.

On Thursday, pet food buyers filed a class action lawsuit in US federal court in Los Angeles seeking to represent all California consumers of Fancy Feast. They claimed they would not have purchased the product had they known it had ties to slave labour.

The lawsuit said that Nestle works with Thai Union Frozen Products Plc to import more than 28 million pounds (13 million kilogrammes) of seafood-based pet food for top brands sold in the United States, and it alleged that some of the ingredients in those products came from slave labour...

Nestle: No tolerance for 'forced labour' by suppliers | Bangkok Post: news

American class action lawsuits are as big a sham as the Thai criminal justice system. This silly lawsuit purports to represent those who bought the cat food, and who suffered absolutely no real harm or damages, it does nothing to address the real victims, nor does it really have anything to do with punishing Nestle.

The lawyer scum who file these are the only ones that make money. May not get far in Federal Court; those judges don't tolerate nearly as much nonsense as state judges.

I'm Betting the cats didn't file one complaint, only the stupid money grabbing owners.

Expected, the much larger picture is being missed [and misdirected] regarding multi-nationals such as Nestle.

LONDON — Nestle's admission that slave labor is used to produce its seafood sourced from Thailand sets an example for other companies who need to join forces to push the Thai government to clean up its supply chain, campaigners said on Tuesday.

Nestle on Monday disclosed forced labor was in its supply chain after a year-long investigation found migrants were sold and lured by false promises to work in Thailand's seafood sector, kept in debt bondage and degrading conditions.

The disclosure came as a surprise as international companies rarely acknowledge abuses in their supply chains despite coming under increasing pressure from consumers and governments to be transparent about how and where their products are sourced.

Verite, a charity fighting labor injustices, which carried out the research, welcomed Nestle's admission and said virtually all companies sourcing seafood in Thailand, the world's third-largest seafood exporter, were exposed to the same risks.

"Sometimes, the net is too heavy and workers get pulled in to the water and just disappear," Verite quoted one Myanmar fisherman as saying. Another person spoke of barely having enough money to survive despite working on a boat for 10 years.

Geneva-based Nestle, whose brands include KitKat bars, Perrier water and Purina petfood, commissioned Verite to conduct the investigation a year ago after a spate of media reports about appalling working conditions in the seafood sector.

The company has been under mounting pressure with U.S. law firm Hagens Berman filing two lawsuits against Nestle since August, accusing it of importing fish-based pet food from a Thai supplier using slave labor and importing cocoa beans from suppliers who use child labor in Ivory Coast.

Need for Transparency

For the report, Verite interviewed more than 100 people, including some 80 workers from Thailand's poorer neighbours Cambodia and Myanmar. It also spoke to boat owners, shrimp farm owners and representatives of Nestle's supplier among others.

Its conclusions prompted Nestle to unveil a system of self-policing to clean up its supply chain.

These measures include a system for workers to report grievances anonymously, training boat owners on labor practices and improvements in tracing seafood as well as hiring auditors and a high-level manager to make sure changes are implemented.

Steve Trent, executive director of Environmental Justice Foundation, which has issued several reports on abuses in the Thai seafood sector in the past three years, said Nestle's was an important admission and he hoped others would follow.

"We need business to own up to the abuses in their supply chains and then work collectively to eradicate them," Trent said in comments emailed to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

He said although seafood supply chains were complicated and oblique, the advances in technology and application of forensic, risk-based auditing meant companies could take some action.

"Businesses today have the ability to build the kind of transparencyย needed to effectively combat these human rights abuses and illegal fishing," Trent said.

Campaigners welcomed Nestle's action plan but urged the company and other buyers to put pressure on the Thai government to ensure laws and policies to end slave labor were enforced.

The European Union threatened earlier this year to ban Thai seafood imports if the country failed to adopt adequate measures against slave labor and illegal fishing.

Since 2014, the U.S. State Department has put Thailand on its Tier 3 list of worst offenders in an annual ranking of countries by their efforts to combat human trafficking.

"Industries need to recognise that they have a responsibility ... to essentially call out governments on what they need to be doing as part of this," said Aidan McQuade, director of Anti-Slavery International.

He said inspections of boats at sea, where many of the abuses occur, are crucial to ending slavery in the seafood industry but that was the responsibility of the Thai government.

Verite Executive Director Dan Viederman said the Thai government and regional governments were clearly essential in any long-term solution since Nestle could not do this alone.

"We have to be realistic about how long it will take ... but at the same time there's massive urgency for the workers themselves, and finding the right balance between those two is certainly a challenge Nestle will face," Viederman said.

Nestle Admits to Slavery in Thai-Sourced Seafood

Nestlé Admits Slavery In Thailand While Fighting Child Labour Lawsuit In Ivory Coast

It’s hard to think of an issue that you would less like your company to be associated with than modern slavery. Yet last November Nestlé, the world’s largest foodmaker and one of the most recognisable household brands, went public with the news it had found forced labour in its supply chains in Thailand and that its customers were buying products tainted with the blood and sweat of poor, unpaid and abused migrant workers.

By independently disclosing that Nestlé customers had unwittingly bought products contaminated by the very worst labour abuses, the company said it was moving into a new era of self-policing of its own supply chains. A year-long investigation by the company confirmed media reports that the seafood industry in Thailand is riddled with forced labour and human trafficking and that slave labour was involved in the production of its Fancy Feast catfood brand.

Nestlé also made sure to make it clear that no other company sourcing seafood from Thailand, the world’s third-largest seafood exporter, could have avoided being exposed to the same risks.

“As we’ve said consistently, forced labour and human rights abuses have no place in our supply chain,” said Magdi Batato, Nestlé’s executive vice-president in charge of operations, in a written statement. “Nestlé believes that by working with suppliers we can make a positive difference to the sourcing of ingredients.”

The disclosure was considered by many to be ground-breaking. Nick Grono, the chief executive of NGO the Freedom Fund, which has invested heavily in anti-trafficking initiatives in Thailand, believes Nestlé’s admission could be a considerable force in shifting the parameters of what can be expected of businesses when it comes to supply chain accountability.

“Nestlé’s decision to conduct this investigation is to be applauded,” he says. “If you’ve got one of the biggest brands in the world proactively coming out and admitting that they have found slavery in their business operations, then it’s potentially a huge game-changer and could lead to real and sustained change in how supply chains are managed.”

The research (pdf) for Nestlé’s report was conducted by US corporate accountability business Verité, which works closely with organisations trying to help improve their supply chain transparency.

Last year Verité was involved in another exercise in self-disclosure by outdoor clothing company Patagonia, which announced that it had discovered several points in its supply chain in Taiwan where forced labour and unethical recruitment practices were flourishing.

Verite’s chief executive, Dan Viederman, said: “In the last six months Verité has been involved in two high-profile disclosures from major brands and one of the most important lessons for us to recognise is that in neither case did the companies suffer greatly in terms of being associated with these labour conditions. Instead, they received some credit [for] being bold enough to be associated with this.”

“I really hope that the recent examples help mobilise companies to be bolder and investigate more deeply because soon the reputational damage in not doing so could be considerable”

For Viederman, the biggest issue is working out how to manage the disclosures into actual change for vulnerable people trapped at the bottom of global commodity chains.

Cleaning up the supply chain

There is also a growing legal imperative for many large multinationals to start seriously engaging with labour abuses in their business operations. Legislation in both the US and the UK requires larger companies to publish annual reports on their efforts to keep their businesses slavery-free.

The success of the 2010 California Transparency in Supply Chains Act has been patchy but it has spawned a series of civil litigation suits, with consumers or workers using the legislation to launch legal actions against companies they accuse of making misleading public statements on their anti-slavery efforts.

Nestlé is one of the companies facing legal action in the US. Last week the company, along with Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, failed in its bid to get the US Supreme Court to throw out a lawsuit seeking to hold them liable for the alleged use of child slaves in cocoa farming in the Ivory Coast.

This puts the company in the unfortunate position of disclosing slavery in one part of its operations, while at the same time fighting through the courts to fend off accusations that it exists in another – more profitable – part of its business.

Andrew Wallis, chief executive of Unseen UK, an anti-trafficking charity advocating for more supply chain accountability, said: “For me there is a big issue with one part of Nestlé saying, ‘OK we have been dragged along with everyone else to face the issue of slavery in Thailand and so let’s take the initiative and do something about it’, and at the same time fighting tooth and nail through the courts to avoid charges of child slavery in its core operations in the Ivory Coast.”

He argues that Nestlé’s self-reporting could also be seen as a tactic to head off or deflate other pending civil litigation suits.

“It’s easy to own up to something that has already been uncovered,” he says. “By the time Nestlé owned up to slavery in the Thai seafood industry it was accepted knowledge. It’ll be a brave new world when companies are actually doing the real investigation to probe into part of their supply chains that have remained outside the public domain.

“We need to move into a space where we say, ‘We’re all guilty; let’s get past that to a place where we can properly address the problem’ – and I don’t think we’re there yet.”

Nestlé Admits Slavery In Thailand While Fighting Child Labour Lawsuit In Ivory Coast

and so on it goes....


Conflict minerals



Demand for metals used in mobile phones and other electronics fueled the Second Congo War, which claimed almost 5.5 million lives.[62] In a 2012 news story, The Guardian reported: "In unsafe mines deep underground in eastern Congo, children are working to extract minerals essential for the electronics industry. The profits from the minerals finance the bloodiest conflict since the second world war; the war has lasted nearly 20 years and has recently flared up again. ... For the last 15 years, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been a major source of natural resources for the mobile phone industry."[63]

Slave labor? Shit, you should be more concerned with the crap they put in their ingredients!

Originally Posted by Jesus Jones

Slave labor? Shit, you should be more concerned with the crap they put in their ingredients!

Why is that?
I couldn't care less about what crap you put into your mouth but slave labour concerns me.

hopefully this will turn up the heat on this issue.

Originally Posted by Hans Mann

A year-long investigation by the company confirmed media reports that the seafood industry in Thailand is riddled with forced labour and human trafficking and that slave labour

did they contact Prayuth and ask for comment ?

I am concerned over sea fish stocks, are they overfished and what fish species is being caught to feed fat cats in America.