Myanmar Archives - Saving Seafood

Study examines how to build resilient aquatic food systems amid COVID-19

June 1, 2021 — A new study has investigated the details of how the outbreak and spread of COVID-19 impacted the availability and supply of seafood, with fish-producing countries in Asia and Africa reporting huge disruptions of their aquatic food value chain in 2020.

With nearly every fish-producing country in the world reeling from the effects of COVID-19 on production, processing, and supply of aquatic food products, the study identifies short- and long-term policy responses that are likely to shape the seafood market trends in Egypt, Nigeria, Bangladesh, India, and Myanmar – with spillover effects to global availability and pricing of seafood products.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Contaminants found in oysters could portend larger environmental and food safety problem

August 10, 2020 — New research suggests contamination of oyster beds with plastics, paint, and baby formula in Asia could reveal a larger emerging global public health risk.

Scientists from the University of California, Irvine, in collaboration with Environmental Defense Fund, Cornell University, and Australia’s University of Queensland, found traces of plastics, kerosene, paint, talc, and milk supplement powders in the beds on the eastern Andaman Sea of Myanmar.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Collapse in Myanmar Seafood Exports Puts 1 Million Jobs At Risk

June 1, 2020 — About 1 million people may lose their jobs in Myanmar’s fisheries industry, with almost all exports ceasing since February as the spread of Covid-19 prompted major buyers, led by China and the U.S., to halt orders.

Processing plants wouldn’t have been able to deliver anyway, as factory closures were part of the government’s measures to stall the pandemic. Before the outbreak, the Myanmar Fisheries Federation forecast record exports of $1 billion this year, up about 40% from 2019. That’s been slashed to $350 million.

The fisheries sector employs about 3.5 million people in Myanmar, roughly 6% of the Southeast Asian nation’s workforce. In some coastal regions, one in three workers earns a living from seafood and marine products, according to a World Bank report in June 2019.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

ILO Finds Progress in Fixing Thai Fishing Industry Abuses

March 7, 2018 — BANGKOK — A survey of working conditions in Thailand’s fishing and seafood industry conducted by the U.N.’s International Labor Organization has found that new regulations resulted in progress in some areas, including less physical violence, but problems such as unfair pay and deception in contracting persist.

The European Union in April 2015 gave Thailand a “yellow card” on its fishing exports, warning that it could face a total ban on EU sales if it didn’t reform the industry. Thailand’s military government responded by introducing new regulations and setting up a command center to fight illegal fishing.

The ILO report released Wednesday on “Ship to Shore Rights” recommends that the Thai government strengthen its legal framework, ensure effective enforcement, establish higher industry standards and enhance workers’ skills, knowledge and welfare.

“We want competitiveness in the global seafood trade to mean more than low prices and high quality,” Graeme Buckley, ILO country director for Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos, said at a news conference. “We want it to mean decent work for all the industry’s workers, from the boat to the retailer.”

A Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press investigation in 2015-16 that uncovered severe rights abuses affecting migrant workers in Thailand’s fishing and seafood industries helped turn an international spotlight on the problem. The AP’s stories contributed to the freeing of more than 2,000 men from Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, more than a dozen arrests, amended U.S. laws and lawsuits seeking redress.

The ILO said that changes in Thailand’s legal and regulatory framework had contributed to positive developments since the group’s last survey of workers in 2013.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New York Times

Rights Abuses Still ‘Widespread’ In Thailand’s Fishing Industry, Report Says

January 23, 2018 — Forced labor, human trafficking and other rights abuses are “widespread” in the Thai fishing industry, according to a new Human Rights Watch report that provides an update on a sector that has been cited for enabling slavery conditions.

In recent years, reports have emerged that detail forced labor and confinement on ships that make up Thailand’s large fishing fleet, where migrants from Thailand’s neighbors, such as Myanmar and Cambodia, are often victimized. Past reports have found prison-like conditions; the new report details how workers are often paid below the minimum wage, are not paid on time, and are held in debt.

Despite scrutiny from U.S. and European monitors and the Thai government’s public promises to clamp down, the abuses remain a big part of Thailand’s fishing industry, according to the report.

From Bangkok, Michael Sullivan reports for NPR’s Newscast unit:

“Under Thai law, migrant laborers are not entitled to Thai labor law protection. …

“The European Union has warned Thailand it could face a seafood export ban and the U.S. has placed Thailand on the Tier 2 Watch List in its latest trafficking in persons report.”

The 134-page report from Human Rights Watch is titled “Hidden Chains: Forced Labor and Rights Abuses in Thailand’s Fishing Industry. Compiled from interviews with 248 current and former fishers, it includes several quotes from workers.

“I didn’t know what was going on when I arrived,” trafficked Burmese worker Bang Rin said in March of 2016. “They just put me in a lockup, and it was only when the boat came in that I realized that was where I’d have to work. I went to do my pink card application on the 4th, and on the 5th I was out on the boat.”

The HRW says the research was conducted from 2015 to 2017, when its staff members visited all of Thailand’s major fishing ports.

Read the full story at New England Public Radio (NEPR)

Labor issues improving with increased scrutiny, according to Thai industry rep

October 16, 2017 — Thai seafood producers claim they’re working to meet stricter reporting requirements, which they say are helping to improve labor and food safety problems in the industry.

There has been a rise in reporting requirements due to the U.S. Congress’ Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015, according to Panisuan Jamnamwej, chairman of the Committee on Fisheries and Related Industries at the Thai Chamber of Commerce. In addition, the introduction of QR code technology is increasing traceability and curbing abuses in Thailand’s seafood sector, according to Panisuan. Shrimp farmers are being encouraged to adapt the QR codes by being supplied with mobile data connections, he said, and wild-catch fishers are getting better at tracking their takes.

“Importers say you need to provide information such as the details of vessels and catches. Similarly on feed, if your fishmeal was caught at sea, you need the name of the ship, even if only one percent of the material came from that vessel,” Panisuan said.

In the past two years, Thailand’s fishing sector has faced sharp international criticism for its use of indentured Burmese laborers on some of its vessels, as documented by several NGOs. Thai industries have also run into trouble for their import of workers from neighboring Myanmar – the process itself is legal, but private recruiters have at times run afoul of the law. Burmese laborers made up the bulk of staff at several processing plants visited by SeafoodSource in Thailand recently.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Fish caught by slaves may be tainting your cat food

January 3, 2017 — Crack open a can of seafood-flavored cat food and whiff that fishy broth. Now try to guess where those gloopy bits of meat originate.

It’s a futile task. Oftentimes, no one knows quite how they got there, or who hauled those fish aboard which boat. Not even the multinational corporations who sell it on supermarket shelves.

Sure, pet food conglomerates can tell you which factories ground up the fish. They know who mixes in the additives, like tricalcium phosphate, and then dumps it into a can.

But the men who actually yanked it out of the sea? They’re usually anonymous, obscured by a murky supply chain.

That’s unfortunate. Because much of the pet food sold in the West is supplied by a Southeast Asian seafood industry, centered in Thailand, that is infamous for its use of forced labor.

For years, this industry has been scandalized by reports of human trafficking and even outright slavery. The victims are men from Myanmar and Cambodia, duped by human traffickers.

Here’s how the scam works. Traffickers promise desperate men a job on a factory or farm in Thailand — a relatively prosperous country compared to its poverty-stricken neighbors.

But there is no legit job. The victims are instead forced onto squalid trawlers. Once the boats leave port, they enter a lawless sea, and the men are forced to toil without pay — sometimes for years on end.

Read the full story at PRI

Thai Navy shows off technology to fight fishing abuses

December 9, 2016 — SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand — Thailand’s navy on Friday showed off new technology to monitor fishing boats in a renewed effort to crack down on illegal fishing, forced labor and corruption in the seafood industry.

New equipment the navy has been testing includes a GPS tracking system to monitor fishing vessels, a central database and a scanner for officials to check documents.

The system, demonstrated to reporters, won’t fully be in place until April, but outside groups are already skeptical it will achieve what it’s set out to do unless more human enforcement is put into place.

Thailand has been under pressure from the European Union after revelations that it relied heavily on forced labor, and is facing a potential total EU ban on seafood imports unless it reforms its fishing industry.

‘‘We’re doing this to increase the effectiveness of inspection, because putting humans in the loop has caused some errors in the past,’’ said Cdr. Piyanan Kaewmanee, head of a Thai navy group that oversees illegal fishing, who pointed to corrupt officials as a major issue. ‘‘We can ensure that our workers are accounted for, and aren’t lost at sea or transferred from ship to ship.’’

New on Friday was a handheld scanner that can read crew identification and other papers to make sure workers are documented and the fishing gear is licensed. During the inspection demonstration, workers crouched and huddled together, holding up green identification cards, as Thai navy sailors boarded their ship, looked through documents, and patted down workers.

The scanners will be integrated into a vessel monitoring system which will keep track of the location of all Thai fishing vessels using GPS technology and a central database.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Boston Globe

Hardships await fishermen lured to Indonesia

April 21, 2016 — “I would never recommend anyone to work at sea,” says a fisherman from Myanmar who lost four fingers in an accident while on a fishing trawler.

Despite a difficult life as a fisherman, Tunlin knew he had to be patient if he wanted to survive. “I couldn’t give up my life at sea,” said the 34-year-old who returned from Ambon Island in Indonesia last year.

Tunlin is among some 2,900 fishermen who have been rescued and repatriated by the Labour Rights Promotion Network Foundation (LPN). The operation, started in 2014, continues to help both Thais and migrants, mostly from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, stranded in Indonesia.

Recalling his life before Indonesia, Tunlin said he had worked at a shrimp-peeling shed from the age of 16 in Samut Sakhon province, home to a large Myanmar migrant community. But the meagre earnings –100 baht per day — hardly sufficed.

Read the full story at the Bangkok Post

Jail terms sought for men trafficking fishermen in Indonesia

February 27, 2016 — TUAL, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian prosecutors are seeking prison sentences of up to 4 1/2 years for five Thais and three Indonesians accused of human trafficking in connection with slavery in the seafood industry.

The suspects were arrested in the remote island village of Benjina last May after the slavery was revealed by The Associated Press in a report two months earlier.

The victims — 13 fishermen from Myanmar who testified under protection of Indonesia’s Witness and Victim Protection Agency — told the court that they had been tortured, forced to work up to 24 hours a day and were not paid. They also said they were locked up in a prison-like cell in the fishing company’s compound.

In their sentencing demand, prosecutors on Friday sought 4 1/2-year sentences for Thai captain Youngyut Nitiwongchaeron and four countrymen — Boonsom Jaika, Surachai Maneephong, Hatsaphon Phaetjakreng and Somchit Korraneesuk — as well as Indonesian Hermanwir Martino.

They sought 3 1/2-year sentences for two other Indonesians, Yopi Hanorsian and Muklis Ohoitenan.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Gloucester Daily Times