Where do the breaded fish, fish cakes and seafood sold in Europe and France come from? A significant part, from China. The country, which has deployed the largest fishing fleet in history, with nearly 7,000 ocean-going boats, has also become a superpower in the packaging and freezing of seafood. On the east coast of the country , factories have used for several years docile and cheap labor: Uighur workers, transferred and forcibly conscripted, in factories located thousands of kilometers from their region of origin. The products would then be exported to the United States and Europe, and in particular to France, by several agri-food giants, such as Cité Marine and Nomad Foods. All the American and European companies involved respond to having launched internal investigations or no longer collaborate with these factories.
Chinese documents and amateur videos filmed by Uighur deportees, collected and analyzed by the journalistic NGO The Outlaw Ocean Project, partner of the Worldlift the veil on this industry and its methods.
What there is to know
The Outlaw Ocean Project is a collective of journalists based in Washington, which investigates human rights, labor and environmental issues on the two-thirds of the planet covered by water. It was edited by reporter Ian Urbina, who previously spent seventeen years at New York Times. The last two surveys of this collective, carried out with The New Yorkerare published simultaneously by the American magazine in English, The world in French, Die Zeit in German, and El País in Spanish. They tell on the one hand the human cost of the massive squid fishing carried out by China and, on the other hand, how the forced labor imposed by Beijing on the Uighur minority affects the entire supply chain of seafood products, to supermarkets in the United States or France.
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