No Humans Were Harmed in the Making of This Product
No Humans Were Harmed in the Making of This Product
By JACK EWING JUNE 7, 2015
Workers sorting crabs by size at a pier in Samut Sakhon Province, Thailand. The European Union threatened to ban imports of seafood from the country because of concerns about unlawful fishing.
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. The urgency was underlined on May 14 after at least 72 workers died in a fire that consumed a factory near Manila that made rubber sandals and slippers. The products were made for local markets, according to news reports, but the events showed the potentially deadly consequences of unsafe working conditions.
No producer wants to be excluded from markets in the Group of 7. While the gathering of wealthy nations is known more for bland communiqués than bold initiatives, even a statement of resolve on supply chain standards would be welcome, watchdog groups say. “We would love to see the G-7 leaders make a strong commitment to this,” said Sophia Pickles, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, an advocacy group. “It would be an important signal.” The United States and other countries already have rules designed to ensure that imported products are not contributing to human rights abuses or environmental damage. Dodd-Frank, the American law designed to address the financial crisis, has a provision requiring companies to disclose if they were using minerals like tungsten and gold exported illegally from the Democratic Republic of Congo or neighboring countries.
But watchdogs say the wealthy nations need to do more to ensure that existing rules are more rigorously enforced. “Governments really need to start closing the door to illegally produced products,” said Jason Clay, a senior vice president at the World Wildlife Fund, which has pushed for improved scrutiny of timber and of other products that are often harvested in developing countries and exported to rich ones.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/08/business/international/no-humans-were-harmed-in-the-making-of-this-product.html?_r=0