Millions ‘tricked into buying Nestle cat food produced using slave labor’

Food giant Nestle is being sued in the U.S for allegedly allowing its cat food to contain fish from a supplier that uses slave labor. Customers who filed the class action lawsuit in Los Angeles say they would not have purchased the tins of Fancy Feast had they known how it was produced. According to the lawsuit, Nestle works with Thai Union Frozen Products PCL to import more than 28 million lb (13 million kg) of seafood-based pet food and some of the ingredients come 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.

By hiding this from public view, Nestle has effectively tricked millions of consumers into supporting and encouraging slave labor on floating prisons

Lawyer Steve Berman

The work on the boats is dangerous and exhausting with shifts lasting up to 20 hours a day with little or no pay. Refusal or failure to work to a supervisor’s satisfaction resulting in beatings or even death, according to the lawsuit. Lawyer Steve Berman, managing partner of Hagens Berman, said: “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 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.”

Sea slaves are involuntarily forced into longer and longer periods of servitude as their debt grows and the price of their freedom becomes ever more elusive.

Extract from lawsuit

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