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In 2014, the Guardian revealed that men are "bought and sold like animals and held against their will" to catch shrimp that end up in Walmart, Costco, Carrefour, and Tesco. These men would pay brokers to help them find work but would instead be sold to boat captains. Once on a ship, they worked 20-hour days, endured regular beatings, and sometimes died in execution-style killings.The Associated Press talked to slaves—mostly from Burma, one of the world's poorest countries—being held in the Indonesian island village of Benjina. The journalists there eventually followed the fish they caught to places like Walmart and reported how it ended up in products like the cat food Fancy Feast."California consumers are unknowingly supporting slave labor," co-lead attorney Niall McCarthy said in a statement. "The level of abuse is unspeakable. The truth needs to be exposed so consumers can make informed decisions."According to the complaint, the shrimp at Costco is labelled as "Product of Thailand," which is unsurprising. After all, the country exported $7.3 billion of seafood in 2011, according to the U.S Department of Fisheries, which makes it the third-biggest producer of that product in the world. Sud is seeking an injunction that would require Costco to either label the shrimp as a product of slave labor or to stop selling it.On Motherboard: By 2100, Earth Will Have an Entirely Different Ocean
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