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Off the news this morning. Not good for business.
Remove Eric Barrett!
AMERICANS WARNED THAT NZ SEAFOOD TAINTED BY SLAVE LABOUR
American business leaders are being told to ask questions about New Zealand seafood until this country addresses its reputation for using 21st-century slave labour on fishing boats.
A top diplomat, with United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton beside him, said consumers did not want to buy goods "tainted by modern slavery".
At the launch in Washington of the annual Trafficking in Persons Report, US Ambassador-at-large Luis CdeBaca used a New Zealand example of modern slavery without identifying the business.
The company was Sanford Ltd of Auckland.
The report referred to and backed up year-long Sunday Star-Times and Auckland University Business School reports exposing abuse on foreign charter vessels which take most of New Zealand's deep-sea catch.
The report says the fishermen on mainly South Korean-flagged boats suffered "imposition of significant debts, physical violence, mental abuse, and excessive hours of work". Clinton said it used to be called trafficking. "But I think labelling this for what it is, slavery, has brought it to another dimension."
CdeBaca praised a Chicago chief executive, Tom Mazzetta, whose US$510 million corporation pioneered orange roughy fishing with Sanford.
Mazzetta wrote to Sanford's board demanding action.
Sanford managing director Eric Barratt would not comment.
The report also featured an Otago Daily Times advertisement offering a $1000 reward for an Indonesian sailor, Kismo Pakistan, who fled the Oyang 70 fishing vessel in Dunedin in 2007.
Under the headline "Then and now: fleeing slavery", the ad was placed next to 18th-century US notices offering rewards for the capture of runaway slaves.
