11 Popular Chains Caught Selling Shrimp Made With Child Slave Labor

The shrimp on your dinner table may have been processed by child slaves in Thailand.

A bombshell investigation published today from the Associated Press revealed that a seafood staple in many Americans’ diets is made largely possible through forced labor in a country that’s notorious for its enabling of human traffickers. Much of Thailand’s multi-billion dollar shrimp export industry is made possible with child slave labor, some of whom are so young that they have to stand on a stool to reach the table where families are forced to peel and de-vein shrimp for 12 to 16 hours a day.

The AP tracked shrimp processed in Samut Sakhon — a province just outside of Bangkok — where upwards of 10,000 migrant children ranging from 13 to 15 years old,  are shipped in from neighboring countries like Myanmar and Cambodia and referred to not by their name, but by a number. These children are forced to stand hunched over piles of shrimp and process them at breakneck speeds for little to no pay: