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Prawns
Avoid prawns from Thailand, and contact retailers to check their supply chain. Photograph: Lorna Roach for the Observer
Avoid prawns from Thailand, and contact retailers to check their supply chain. Photograph: Lorna Roach for the Observer

How to buy slavery-free prawns – and have a positive impact on the industry

This article is more than 9 years old
Wield your consumer power to help remove slavery from the Thai seafood supply chain, says the executive director of the Environmental Justice Foundation

As a consumer, you have power: you can shape the marketplace and the actions of major companies. Use the power you have in your wallet to make sure we once and for all remove slavery from the Thai seafood we consume.

1. Contact your supermarket's chief executive – write, call, tweet – and ask them if they can guarantee that they have eliminated slavery in their seafood supply chains – and how they have done this.

2. Ask your retailer if they undertake unannounced, independent inspections at every stage of their Thai seafood supply chains. Ask that they to do this if they don't already.

3. Only buy your seafood from sustainable, well-managed fisheries specifically recommended by reputable organisations such as Marine Conservation Society and Greenpeace.

4. As a last resort, if your retailer cannot confirm that its seafood products originating in Thailand are not 100% slavery-free, don't buy them and tell your supermarket bosses why you are not buying.

Steve Trent, executive director, Environmental Justice Foundation

More on this story

More on this story

  • Thai government urged to drop libel case against British slavery researcher

  • UK to raise slavery concerns with Thailand after prawn exposé

  • Slavery in supermarket supply chains can and must be eliminated

  • I'm boycotting tropical prawns. But slavery demands a political solution

  • Why we at Tesco are not boycotting Thai fishmeal suppliers

  • US may blacklist Thailand after prawn trade slavery revelations

  • Slave labour producing prawns for supermarkets in US, UK: your questions answered

  • Trafficked into slavery on Thai trawlers to catch food for prawns

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