How to Be a Conscious Eater

no sleep. Often there’s just one meal per day, of questionable

nutritional quality and food safety.

Sadly, seafood is by no means the only sector of the food

and agriculture supply chain plagued by inhumane work prac-

tices. An estimated 21 million people are victims of forced labor

around the world, and 3.5 million of them work in some form

of agriculture (which includes fishing and forestry). Although

the problem is much worse in developing countries, neither

the United States nor Europe is entirely virtuous. In 2016, the

nonprofit group KnowTheChain reported that one in twenty

farmworkers in the United States is working against his or

her own will. Most of them are migrant workers from Mexico,

Guatemala, and Haiti, the report says, and they receive little

or no pay.

Fishing is particularly susceptible to shady behavior,

though, because once a boat has left a harbor and dipped past

the horizon, no one is watching. Part of the reason this is so

problematic in Southeast Asian waters is the larger issue of

“illegal, unreported, and unregulated” (IUU) fishing—the des-

ignations of suspicious fishing. It’s estimated that one in five

fish and seafood products worldwide is IUU. What’s on the list

of illegal practices? Taking more fish than is permitted. Taking

the wrong size, or taking them in the wrong season. Catching

fish from another country’s waters without consent. And slav-

ery. Definitely not legal—anywhere in the world.

After consumers, restaurateurs,

retailers, and government officials

were left shell-shocked when an

exposé by The Guardian first came

out in 2014, we quickly yearned

for solutions. Headlines like “How

to find shrimp that’s not produced

by slave labor in Thailand” certainly

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