April 4, 2024 — Dean Pinkert joined the Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.-based Corporate Accountability Lab, a non-governmental organization dedicated to advancing global human rights and environmental sustainability, as a special advisor in November 2021. He was one of the authors of “Hidden Harvest: Human Rights and Environmental Abuses in India’s Shrimp Industry,” a report released 20 March that presented evidence of labor issues at Indian shrimp hatcheries, farms, peeling sheds, and processing plants, as well as mangrove destruction and water contamination from shrimp farm effluent.
SeafoodSource: Why did CAL decide to do such an in-depth investigation of India’s shrimp industry?
Pinkert: Forced labor is very close to the heart of CAL’s mission. We style ourselves as a human rights organization and also an organization that is interested in fostering a sustainable environment. So, when we became aware of the possibility that there were forced labor issues in India’s shrimp industry, we started to look very seriously into that.
I think that you also have to at least understand one piece of context, which is that the shrimp industries in other countries, [including] Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Thailand, and Vietnam, have previously faced a lot of criticism from human rights groups and investigative activities focused on labor abuses, including forced labor, but India had not. When there’s forced labor or environmental abuses in an industry and it looks like CAL can add value because those issues haven’t been fully investigated by human rights groups in the past, CAL is going to jump in and do it.