"It has always been so"

May 28, 2024 10:12 PM

Indian Shrimp: The True Price of a Cheap Appetizer. "IN JANUARY, Farinella finally decided to go public with what he knew about the plant and contacted a journalist. “I think it is likely that I was hired not to manage the facility, but to be the American face that provides the appearance of legitimacy,” he said. For a plant with so many problems, he added, “I’m afraid I can’t be that face.”"
posted by storybored (10 comments total)

Welp, guess I’ll pass on the shrimp cocktail…
posted by From Bklyn at 11:57 PM on May 28

trawling is also an issue
posted by HearHere at 12:09 AM on May 29 [3 favorites]

I'm always a little surprised how frank and forthcoming some people are when they're doing crime. Like, they just spell it out on recorded documents.
posted by ndr at 1:22 AM on May 29 [2 favorites]

"It's bigger than the White House!" lauds the Queen of Versailles trailer. watching it, you can see David Siegel say: you know the Florida part of the 2000 election, i did that "wasn't exactly legal *smiles*"
posted by HearHere at 5:43 AM on May 29

Thanks for posting. What I find most alarming is how corrupt the certifications are that are supposed to provide a modest check on social and environmental exploitation. But the number one concern of compliance orgs is to ensure their clients don't get caught, much like happened with the rating agencies and accountants who signed off on the subprime mortgage crisis in the 2000's. It's all you can eat all the way down. As long as you beat the buffet, everything goes.
posted by dmh at 6:16 AM on May 29 [1 favorite]

Strong deja vu reading this, since the whole exposure is a replay of what was detailed in the last section of "The Secret Life of Groceries", a book published in 2020, only the author was talking about Thailand. In the book he warned that now that people were aware of horrible practices in Thailand, the likely outcome was for purchasers to start sourcing from a different region, instead of helping to improve things in Thailand:
'And so, to avoid the absolute hubris required above, most grocery sellers are much more likely to cut and run. Drop the stigmatized supplier or region and find a new area where they can make new promises. Industry observer Jim Prevor calls this “catering to the aesthetic sense of consumers who don’t like to be associated with ugly things.” It has the vanity of simplicity, the attraction of any moral absolute. But it rarely makes the world a better place.'

Also from the book:
* I begin to understand: third-party certification does not exist to solve a problem in the world, but to solve one inside of me. Their primary purpose is not to make the world a better place. It is to make the grocery store a safer place for me to shop. They lower my barriers to buy by promising me two things I crave: a sense of control and a sense of destiny. <> In reality, audits are faulty, easily gamed, expensive, cumbersome, and antithetical to creating trusting, mutualistic relationships.
* If anything, this is a conspiracy of good intentions, convincing ourselves in circles that we are doing just enough not to require any uncomfortable action, replacing the terror of a gargantuan world with a feeling of control.
posted by of strange foe at 6:42 AM on May 29 [11 favorites]

After reading that I'm switching from rarely eating shrimp to NEVER eating shrimp! Thanks for posting this.
posted by mareli at 8:31 AM on May 29

I haven't eaten shrimp in like 45 years.

But I do have a friend, who, when we are eating after soccer game dinner would often get the Sexy Broccoli dish, and have prawns added on top. And I started thinking, "maybe I could try that". After the Red Lobster revelations about Thailand shrimp and now this, I guess not...
posted by Windopaene at 9:36 AM on May 29

Huh, so cost-cutting and exporting all labor to cheaper production results in a poor quality product.

I'll also note that almost all communication in this article took place over whatsapp, bought by facebook for 19b because it had captured this market.

Their other efforts failed in the area, but once again Facebook or whatever the fuck they call themselves these days are complicit in poisoning the world.
posted by lkc at 1:10 PM on May 29

Calling FB complicit in this because they own a chat app that’s popular in India seems like a massive reach, unless you’re trying to make this an anti-encryption thing.
posted by atoxyl at 10:44 AM on May 30 [2 favorites]