Where does your chicken come from? Slavery conditions in Thai poultry farms.
Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2016 3:25 pm
Guardian report: Modern day slavery in focus.
Full article: https://www.theguardian.com/global-deve ... 8000-birdsThailand: poultry workers cry fowl amid claim they 'slept on floor next to 28,000 birds'
Workers at farms supplying one of Thailand’s largest chicken export firms say they suffered labour abuses including 22-hour shifts and the seizure of passports.
Thailand, one of the world’s biggest chicken exporters, is better known for its troubled seafood industry, rife with practices akin to modern-day slavery. But the Thai poultry industry – which exports roughly 41% of its entire broiler poultry meat production to Europe – is similarly riddled with allegations of abuse, debt bondage, document confiscation, high recruitment fees, long working hours and abysmal pay, research has found.
Rural, isolated farms mean abuses often go unnoticed or unpunished, while complicated supply chains mean global buyers are frequently ignorant of workplace problems, activists say. Thammakaset Farm 2, where Myint was employed, directly supplied Betagro. The company is one of Thailand’s top five chicken exporters along with Charoen Pokphand Foods (CP Foods), Cargill, GFPT and Leamthong, which together account for 70-75% of all Thai chicken exports.
Research published late last year by Finnwatch, a civic organisation working for global corporate responsibility, found that labour abuses including high recruitment fees and withholding of documents had taken place at other big chicken farms, including some owned by CP Foods, a major Thai food conglomerate.
