Thai seafood firm drops supplier after AP report links slave-caught fish to its supply chain

BANGKOK – Thailand’s biggest seafood company says it has cut relations with a supplier found by The Associated Press to have ties to human trafficking and forced labour.

The statement Wednesday by Thai Union Frozen Products follows a yearlong investigation that linked severe abuses on Southeast Asian fishing trawlers to dinner tables in the U.S. and around the world.

“Thai Union embraces AP’s finding,” the company says in a statement that calls the use of slave labour “utterly unacceptable.” Thai Union said the supplier was “terminated” immediately after it was determined it might be involved with forced labour and other abuses.

Journalists followed a large shipment of slave-caught seafood by satellite to a Thai port town, where trucks picked up the fish and redistributed it to dozens of companies, including Thai Union.