← The Expert Witness from Uncover
The Expert Witness from Uncover
Introducing: The Outlaw Ocean S2 and The shrimp factory whistleblower
00:42:05
<p>The Outlaw Ocean is an anthology podcast that plunges you into the vast and often lawless world of the open seas. Today we're featuring an investigation from S2 called The Shrimp Factory Whistleblower. </p><p><br></p><p>In this episode, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ian Urbina joins Josh Farenello. What started off as a dream job, slowly revealed itself to be a nightmare. Josh moved to southern India to oversee a shrimp-processing plant, but it soon dawned on him that he’d been really been hired as an American face to “whitewash” a forced-labour factory. The largely female employees were effectively trapped on the compound, routinely underpaid, and forced to live in inhumane, unsanitary conditions. Over several months, Josh meticulously gathered evidence that he brought to the Outlaw Ocean team for this exclusive exposé. More episodes of The Outlaw Ocean are available at: <a href="https://link.mgln.ai/oo-uncover" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://li...
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- [00:00]
Josh Farinella
Only Boost Mobile Boost Mobile will give you a free year of service. Free year when you buy a new 5G phone. New 5G phone? Enough. But I'm your hype man. When you purchase an eligible device, you.
- [00:10]
Ian Urbina
Get $25 off every month for 12.
- [00:11]
Josh Farinella
Months with credits totaling one year of free service. Taxes extra for the device and service plan online only. This is a CBC podcast.
- [00:22]
Ian Urbina
Where the Law of the Land Ends. The Story begins. Ian I'm Ian Urbina and I'm a journalist who explores the most lawless place on Earth, the vast, unpolicable ocean. I'm also the host of the podcast series the Outlaw Ocean, an immersive audio documentary series that brings together more than eight years of reporting at sea on all seven oceans and more than three dozen countries. We're back with an all new second season, repeatedly risking our safety to tell stories that powerful people don't want you to know. I want to share an episode with you from this brand new season. It's called the Shrimp Factory Whistleblower and it recently won a James Beard Media Award in the investigative journalism category. What started off as a dream job slowly revealed itself to be a nightmare when Josh Farrinello moved to southern India to oversee a shrimp processing plant. It soon dawns on him that he's really been hired as an American face to whitewash a forced labor factory. Josh tries to understand the layers of how such a high volume, low cost product is even possible. Have a listen.
- [01:46]
Josh Farinella
I'm Beefsteak Charlie and I'm warning you, my free shrimp and salad bar could ruin your appetite. Oh shrimp, shrimp.
- [01:56]
Ian Urbina
Shrimp was once a delicacy saved for special occasions, but since the 1980s, it's become a staple of all you can eat buffets at seafood chains across America. To keep up with demand, the US Imports billions of pounds of shrimp every year, and India now provides more than a third of that. According to researchers, this high volume, low price model has left the shrimp industry rife with abuse. As farming, processing and packaging the product has been outsourced to countries with lax oversight and questionable human rights records.
- [02:31]
Josh Farinella
My name is Josh Farinella and I've been in the seafood industry for about 11 years.
- [02:35]
Ian Urbina
On October 29, 2023, Josh landed in Amalapuram, which is a city in Andhra Pradesh, India. Amalapuram sits on the Bay of Bengal, about halfway down India's eastern coast. It's a small city with a population of less than 100,000 people.
- [02:53]
Josh Farinella
My position was to be the general manager of a new factory that was being built. It Was kind of explained to me that this factory would be up and running by January of 24. But until then, I would be at a factory that was supposed to be a temporary factory that Choice was leasing, that Choice retrofitted for, you know, their shrimp productions there.
- [03:13]
Ian Urbina
When Josh says Choice, he means Choice Canning. They're one of India's largest shrimp exporters. In 2023, Choice shipped more than $80 million worth of shrimp to the United States.
- [03:28]
Josh Farinella
My first real red flag was, was the text message I got in the middle of the night from the manager who was there working the overnight shift, telling me there was a woman running through the compound trying to escape. This manager went on to say we were eventually able to, you know, corral her and get her to go back to the dorms and we'll sort this out tomorrow. I mean, it kind of freaked me out because I've never heard of such a thing. It seemed very wrong. I'm used to if somebody doesn't want to be at the factory, you just walk out the front door and go home. That was the first time I realized that's not the case there. The next morning, I get to the office, I asked what was happening with this. It was explained to me that she's gone home. You know, again, part of the red flag about this is from initial text message to when we had that meeting. We're probably only talking about five hours. Like, how is, you know, in this little five hour window, how is this already resolved and she's gone?
- [04:33]
Ian Urbina
Over the coming months, Josh Farinella learned that this incident was just the tip of the iceberg. According to Josh, at Choice's factory in Amalaporum, the pressure to meet production quotas led to overcrowded dorms, unsanitary conditions, labor abuses, forged audits, and the use of illegal antibiotics. He was shocked by what he saw, and he decided to do something about it. He came forward and told the Outlaw Ocean project what he'd seen. Josh handed us a massive trove of documents. It included secret recordings he'd made, photos from inside the plant, copies of internal audits, as well as over 6000 emails and 1400 pages of WhatsApp exchanges.
- [05:16]
Josh Farinella
At the end of the day, I think it was just an overwhelming feeling of kind of combined disgust and sadness, you know, discussed in terms of this company that I thought was the best of the best. I mean, the way the. The labor force was treated over there was atrocious. It's not something that should be happening, you know, at kind of this day. And Age, that's just unacceptable. You know, something had to be done, and I was in a position where I was able to do something about it.
- [05:53]
Ian Urbina
I'm Ian Urbina, and this is the Outlaw Ocean. Early in 2024, I was sitting on a ship in the Antarctic with Ben Blankenship. He's the staff videographer for the Aloe Ocean Project. We were at sea for a couple weeks working on a different investigation about whales when I got an email. The email was from a guy named Josh. He was letting me know that he had seen some pretty shocking things at a major shrimp processing plant in southern India. He told me that he knew about the Outlaw Ocean project because he had worked for another seafood company that we'd previously investigated. And he said that he had thought through that experience that we were fair and trustworthy. I wrote him back, and we started to talk almost daily for several days via satellite phone. And it became pretty clear that this was a huge journalistic opportunity, not one I could pass up, you know, Josh told us that he was planning to leave his job in a matter of weeks, so we needed to get over to India fast, or else the opportunity to see the plant and to verify the conditions would be lost. So Ben and I, at that point, kind of had a reckoning with the captain of the ship and asked him, is there any way he could let us off the ship so that we could go chase this other story? He said there was one commercial airstrip in Antarctica, and that airstrip had on average two flights a week. But they were really unpredictable as to when they would take off, because it was hugely weather dependent. And he would drop us off near the airport, but we'd have to figure it out from there, you know, we convinced the captain to let us off, but it was a pretty dangerous gamble. We had no camping gear, no extreme cold weather gear. Antarctica is a cold place. And we had no plans for lodging. So we got dropped off. We marched in, found the first nearby building, happened to be a Russian science station, knocked on the door, amazingly warm, open. Folk who spoke Eastern English let us in. And from there, we scrambled to set up a flight off the island, get a ticket, and then figure out how to march our way to the airport. We were also trying to figure out how we were going to get not just out of Antarctica, but to India. And we had to apply for visas and figure out the flight path that would lead us there. In the end, I got my visa rejected, probably because I had a bit more of an online footprint. And it was pretty obvious I was a journalist and investigative journalist. And so they blocked me. Ben had a lighter footprint and he was allowed in the country, which was a really great news that we got one of us in. Ben flew immediately from Antarctica, all the way to India and made his way to the plant to meet Josh. Ben was able to verify so much of what Josh had told us, but more importantly, to some degree, he landed the footage that brought the story to life.
- [09:36]
Josh Farinella
I mean, I guess it's no secret at this point that I've got a interesting past, I guess you could say.
- [09:43]
Ian Urbina
Josh is a soft spoken 45 year old with a neatly trimmed beard, a shaved head and full sleeves of tattoos running up both arms. He was raised in a former mining town in Pennsylvania by a Vietnam veteran and a Social Security worker. Josh's life went off the rails when he was younger. He picked up convictions for drunk driving and trying to cash false checks. And for a while he lived on the street. But by 2015, he turned things around.
- [10:11]
Josh Farinella
Living in northeast Pennsylvania. There was a company that had just opened up a manufacturing facility there and it happened to be Choice Canning. So I got in there as just general production labor through a temp service. You know, after about 90 days I got hired on as a production supervisor. From there I made my way to production manager and eventually into quality assurance management at that facility.
- [10:38]
Ian Urbina
Josh liked the work, found he was good at it and kept moving up in the industry. He took a better job with another seafood company, Lund's fisheries. Then in 2023 he went back to Choice Canning. That's when he took the job in Amalapuram, India.
- [10:54]
Josh Farinella
So my job title over there was the general manager of the entire compound itself. So I wasn't just responsible for production. I wasn't just responsible for, you know, import, export. I was responsible for all of it. The only people I reported to were the owners.
- [11:11]
Ian Urbina
Choice has corporate offices in two big Indian cities. Kochi on the southwest coast of the Indian Ocean and Chennai on the southeastern seaboard. It also has a factory in Jersey City, New Jersey. If you want to understand the scale of the Indian shrimp industry, you don't have to look much further than the Amalapuram factory itself.
- [11:32]
Josh Farinella
You can't see much from the outside. It's. I mean, there's about an eight foot concrete wall surrounding everything. So yeah, you just, you just see like a concrete compound. I mean, the place is pretty much like its own city.
- [11:46]
Ian Urbina
This is a compound that's bigger than a football stadium and it only processes and packages one thing, that's shrimp. Massive amounts of it the finished product.
- [11:56]
Josh Farinella
Out of this facility is already in retail packaging. The quota was 40 finished containers. Each finished container is about 33,000 pounds.
- [12:05]
Ian Urbina
Just to clarify, that's 40 shipping containers of packaged shrimp leaving the factory every single day.
- [12:12]
Josh Farinella
If you needed to ship a container of £33,000 out, you actually needed about £66,000 of raw material to come in. So, you know, multiply that 66,000 by 40, and that's the amount of material that was supposed to be going through that building each day.
- [12:30]
Ian Urbina
Processing seafood is a race against the clock to prevent spoilage. So the plant runs more or less 24, 7. There's also not a lot of automation in shrimp processing. So this means that the factory relies on an enormous amount of labor to meet those quotas.
- [12:45]
Josh Farinella
On any given day, there were 1100, 1200 workers on site. The plant is staffed by two different types of laborers. The first group are the migrant workers. They live on site. They stay there year round in the dormitories. Pretty much their entire life happens at the factory. The second group are the local workers who live in the local villages and they come in, you know, every day for their work shift and then they go home.
- [13:12]
Ian Urbina
Choice doesn't recruit directly. Instead, they rely on third party labor contractors to provide them with enough workers.
- [13:20]
Josh Farinella
Amalapuram itself is a pretty poor area. The area that these migrant workers were coming from were even worse off. So, I mean, they were coming from, you know, the poorest of the poorest of the poor.
- [13:35]
Ian Urbina
That means places like West Bengal. The migrant workers in Amalapuram were mostly women. Many of them came from the lowest social caste and were also illiterate. One of Josh's responsibilities was to oversee that workforce. So when Josh got to the plant, the first thing he did was to look at the size of the workforce, how their contracts were set up, and what their living conditions were like. He took a look at some of the third party audit reports that Choice had filed and noticed that some of the numbers just seemed off.
- [14:09]
Josh Farinella
When I'm reviewing these audit reports, they always had the same thing in common. Where there's a section, they ask, how many workers do you have? You know, do you only use workers that are housed on site? Do you use local workers that you bring in? And the answer was always the same. It was, we don't use any local workers and we Only only have 225 or 250 migrant workers living on site. So it seemed very strange to me that, you know, we've got 650 people here. Why are we telling everybody else we only have 200 and change. Eventually I was making my way through the dormitory and the, you know, the canteen facilities and realized we only had enough beds for 450 migrant workers on site.
- [14:56]
Ian Urbina
With too many people and not enough beds, workers were expected to share.
- [15:00]
Josh Farinella
If I'm working day shift and you're working night shift, you know, while you're at work, I'm sleeping in that bed. While I'm at work, you're sleeping in the same bed. So people don't actually have, you know, their own beds to sleep in.
- [15:13]
Ian Urbina
The more Josh looked around the factory, the more red flags he found. Josh told us that workers had to provide their own bedding, which meant they'd often sleep on bare mattresses. And if there weren't enough beds to go around at any given moment, they'd have to sleep on the floor and use rolled up clothes in place of a pillow. Bed bugs were an issue.
- [15:38]
Josh Farinella
There was a heavy infestation in the workers mattresses. It really didn't seem like it was taken that seriously. You know, there weren't any new mattresses ordered. It was, you know, the mattresses that already had the infestations were just sprayed and then Del was right back to sleeping on them.
- [15:57]
Ian Urbina
Hygiene problems at the plant weren't limited to the dorms.
- [16:02]
Josh Farinella
The sanitary conditions in the kitchen were very bad. There were bugs visible, you know, everywhere you look, running, scurrying across the floors, in the corners, in the food, underneath the food storage. The bathrooms weren't much better than the kitchen. The plumbing didn't always work. The showers didn't always work.
- [16:24]
Ian Urbina
Josh had been given a tour of the plant when he first got there. But once he started looking around on his own, he realized that there were entire sections of the factory that he hadn't been shown.
- [16:35]
Josh Farinella
There's a staircase at the end of one of the buildings. It's know it's an external staircase so it's, you know, it's visible. And I would always see people walking up and down the staircase. And if you're far enough away from that building and you look up, you could see clotheslines with, you know, laundry hanging on it. Thought it looked kind of strange, so I decided to walk up the staircase. So you get to the top of the stairs and on your right hand side, you know, on top of this maintenance building, there's another building. It looks like it should be, I looks like it should be a storage room. You know, you walk inside of it and the only thing that are there are a few bunk Beds. There are people in all of the bunk beds, but there's not enough bunk beds for the people. So then you have everybody sleeping on the floors as well. It's hot, it's poorly lit. I mean, there's four bathroom stalls next to that dormitory that all have broken doors and you know, bad plumbing, showers that didn't work. And you know, that was, in terms of living conditions, that was probably the most eye openening thing for me.
- [17:38]
Ian Urbina
Worst of all, the secret dormitory was located directly above the plant's ammonia compressors.
- [17:45]
Josh Farinella
The ammonia compressors, I mean they, they operate all of the refrigeration for the factory. I know that the health risks of having any kind of, you know, ammonia leak are huge. I mean, that's possibly, you know, deadly. So to have people sleeping pretty much right on top of them is concerning.
- [18:04]
Ian Urbina
Likewise, if a fire broke out, those stairs Josh mentioned would be the only way out.
- [18:11]
Josh Farinella
I got the feeling from other management that were there and you know, the HR team and everybody that some of them knew it was wrong and they also knew that you're not going to fix it.
- [18:24]
Ian Urbina
They.
- [18:25]
Josh Farinella
But that's just the way this is.
- [18:30]
Ian Urbina
Again, the Amalapuram plant was constantly trying to keep up with production quotas. So despite not having enough beds to accommodate the workers they did have, the factory was still chronically understaffed with no space in the dorms to add more resident workers. Josh needed to attract more day laborers from the surrounding area.
- [18:47]
Josh Farinella
We weren't getting enough local workers. So that's when I decided, you know, let's take a look at the numbers here. And if, I mean, maybe we could offer them more of an incentive to, to get people to come in, you know, they were getting paid 350 rupees per day. I proposed an increase to 400 rupees per day. After I did that, somebody from HR said, hey, you can't do that. If you're going to increase them, it has to be up to 400. And I think it was 454 or 455 rupees per day because that's the required minimum wage that they have to make. Kind of threw me off because now I know we're paying far less than minimum wage.
- [19:27]
Ian Urbina
450 rupees is about 5 US dollars. Josh showed us an invoice from a labor contractor and a separate email exchange between managers. And they both seemed to confirm that some workers were paid only 350 rupees a day, which is a little over $4. He raised the issue of wages with executives at the plant. And word got to the company's CEO, a man named Joe Thomas, inside the company. He goes by jt.
- [19:54]
Josh Farinella
You know, JT followed up with an email. I can't believe this is happening at one of my businesses. You know, I always pay people what they're supposed to be paid. And within the hour, that same, you know, VP of HR replied, included the legal team on the reply, and said, sir, we paid them exactly how you told us to pay them. And there was no reply after that. I don't know if it was the final straw, but it was very close to it, where I could really step back and say, this is bullshit.
- [20:25]
Ian Urbina
This kind of exchange would become a pattern while Josh was there. He or other middle managers would identify a problem. It could be bedbugs, a safety issue, a faulty refrigeration unit, anything, really. He'd bring it to senior management, and then nothing. He told us he felt like his hands were tired. He was blamed by management for anything that went wrong, but he couldn't get the authorization he needed to make changes that might actually fix things. This was especially hard when workers appealed to him directly. Josh told us about one migrant worker in particular. Her job involved reporting production numbers to a WhatsApp group every half hour.
- [21:07]
Josh Farinella
And they would send these numbers to me. And I would always ask, you know, or I'd say, hey, you know, thanks for reporting this. Good job, you know, keep it up. And then I would occasionally ask, is everything okay?
- [21:17]
Ian Urbina
Josh said that after a bit of back and forth, this particular worker started to open up to him.
- [21:24]
Josh Farinella
She was able to explain to me that, well, she's been away from home, you know, working here for two years. She's hasn't had a day off in over a year, and she really wants to go home. She really misses her family. I mean, it kind of progressed from there where I. I was trying to find out what the real situation was, but every time I would ask a question, you know, where it seemed like she wanted to tell me, I would get a response that I think was from somebody else. I. I know that sounds strange, but these communications were with somebody who speaks very, very limited English. I asked if everybody there is okay, and, you know, got a response back that says, yes, everyone is absolutely okay with. I think it was a smiley face emoji. It was. It was kind of concerning, and it made me, you know, really hesitant to. To ask anything else because now I. I kind of feel like that conversation is being monitored by somebody who is not her. Sit, sit, relax, sit. The chairs are comfortable. All right, so what were.
- [22:38]
Ian Urbina
In January 2024, Josh recorded a conversation between himself and two labor contractors at the plant. In the recording, you can hear the contractors confirming what the worker had told Josh in their WhatsApp exchange.
- [22:53]
Josh Farinella
Okay. Okay. So you're saying they haven't had a day off to actually do anything in over a year?
- [23:00]
Ian Urbina
Ew. Ew.
- [23:02]
Josh Farinella
Um, yes, we will.
- [23:05]
Ian Urbina
Josh recorded a separate conversation with the plant's welfare executive that outlined how little freedom the migrant workers who live at the plant actually have.
- [23:14]
Josh Farinella
Do we ever have any people who don't say they're leaving and just, you know, pack up their suitcase and walk out the front gate?
- [23:24]
Ian Urbina
In essence, in this exchange, you've got the welfare executive explaining that sometimes workers will say they want to go home and the contractor will stall.
- [23:34]
Josh Farinella
You know, the response was, well, we're.
- [23:36]
Ian Urbina
We'll.
- [23:36]
Josh Farinella
We'll convince them otherwise. You know, we'll just get them to stick around for a little while, and, you know, after a week or two weeks, they'll forget they wanted to leave.
- [23:47]
Ian Urbina
Josh took this to mean that the migrant workers will often just resign themselves to not being able to leave, and they won't ask again. The welfare executive goes on to explain, these stalling tactics don't always work. And some people try to leave without permission, but they can't. That's because anyone trying to leave needs something called a gate pass. To get a gate pass, you need approval not only from a supervisor or labor contractor, but also from the plant's HR department. So it's pretty rare that a worker will actually get one when they ask.
- [24:21]
Josh Farinella
The labor laws over there really aren't a whole lot different than they are here in the States. Employment is still freely chosen. You're free to come and go as you please. If you don't like the job, you can leave the job. There's really no difference between there and here on paper anyway. But in the practical application over there, then, no. No, they're not free to come and go. There was a situation where there was a hole in the wall that surrounds the compound, and workers were just leaving through there. So I have to think, if gate passes were that easy to get, then nobody would have been, you know, leaving through a hole in the wall.
- [25:03]
Ian Urbina
World of secrets the Killing call. A BBC World Service investigation into the.
- [25:08]
Josh Farinella
Murder of Punjabi singer and rapper Sidhu Musayala. The facts, they aren't out in the open. Why Siddhu Musaywala?
- [25:15]
Ian Urbina
You know, uncovering a global criminal underworld that reaches far beyond India's borders. There Are so many rumors no one wants to talk. There might be repercussions. World of secrets, they're killing Khor Listen.
- [25:28]
Josh Farinella
On the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [25:37]
Ian Urbina
I think it could be easy sometimes, at least for us to have a sort of out of sight, out of mind attitude towards the types of things that Josh says he saw at Choice's plant in Amalaporam. Our main concern as consumers is usually the quality of the finished product. We want to know that what's on our plate is safe, healthy, produced to a high standard and being sold to us at a good price. We can't literally see labor abuse on our plates, even if what we're doing eating is tainted by it, and that makes it hard to pay attention to it. And furthermore, we trust that the supermarkets, restaurants and brands that we buy from will be ethical and that all the certifications and labels that go on the packages, well, we trust that those things, you know, that they mean something. Choice Canning presents itself to the public as a responsible, transparent operator in an industry that researchers say is rife with labor abuse, forged audits and deceptive supply chains. They market themselves as a brand you can trust. But Josh says that what he saw at Choice Canning's Amalapuram factory contradicts all of this, and that Choice's practices in India have had very real consequences when it comes to the safety of the shrimp that makes it to the U.S. josh says that this was especially true when it came to the use of antibiotics. Globally, roughly half of the seafood eaten comes from aquaculture, where animals are farmed in close quarters and sickness is common. This is true of shrimp, which are grown by producers in huge industrial tanks or man made ponds with up to 150 shrimp occupying a single square meter. This is why aquaculture farmers, including shrimp farmers, resort to using antibiotics. The widespread use of antibiotics in agriculture is driving a rise in cases where people are getting sick with infections that are resistant to medicine. As a response, the us, Europe and Canada have all made it illegal to import seafood that's been treated with antibiotics. In 2019, the US government, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that close to 3 million antibiotic resistant infections occur each year in America, and those infections killed tens of thousands of people. The Malapuram factory purchases shrimp from a number of different farms. Since antibiotics aren't illegal everywhere, some farms in India still use them. That means that shrimp needs to be tested before it's sorted and packaged for shipping. To ensure that Choice hasn't received any tainted shrimp from its suppliers.
- [28:20]
Josh Farinella
Antibiotics as per the fda, are not permitted on any imported shrimp. Choice's public stance about the use of antibiotics is they're not in anything we pack, they're not in anything we buy. We test, you know, rigorously. Everything we purchase, we, we test. And if there's antibiotics there, we reject the shipment or we destroy the shipment. So again, on paper, you know, the policy is we're doing the right thing. The reality of the situation is go ahead and pack it even if it is antibiotic positive, and ship it to the U.S.
- [29:05]
Ian Urbina
Josh says that shrimp that tested positive was treated the same as everything else and would often leave the factory in packaging with antibiotic free labels. Discussions around antibiotic tainted product happened so often at the plant that management came up with a code word to use internally. They called it Oscar.
- [29:29]
Josh Farinella
The first time that antibiotic shrimp were mentioned to me, the first time I was told, hey, they're in the factory and they're packed. I sent a WhatsApp message to one of the owners and I said, hey, we've got this, and this is antibiotic positive. The response back, you know, almost immediately is we don't say that we use the word Oscar. I mean, the thought process behind using it is, you know, if anybody questions it, you could say it means anything.
- [29:58]
Ian Urbina
We asked Josh, who authorizes shipping out this tainted product.
- [30:02]
Josh Farinella
My boss, Jacob. He's one of the owners.
- [30:05]
Ian Urbina
Jacob is Jacob Joze, the company's vice president of sales and procurement. He's also the son of the CEO who goes by JT. Josh showed us WhatsApp exchanges where he informed Jacob that 225 cases of raw shrimp that were headed to Aldi south supermarkets in the US were Oscar, which means they tested positive for antibiotics. Jacob's response was simply, quote, ship it. According to an inventory spreadsheet that Josh gave us, Choice Cannings Amalaporum facility received over 250 tons of, of antibiotic positive shrimp in 2023. It's hard to say exactly how much of this shrimp made it to the US but other company documents seem to show instances where antibiotic positive shipments made the full journey. We checked, and the FDA's own data indicates they've tested shrimp from Choice Canning for antibiotics just 21 times since 2003 and never found a violation. In that same period, Choice has sent more than 100,000 tons of shrimp to the United States.
- [31:11]
Josh Farinella
The FDA is, I mean, they're just not equipped to sample everything that comes in. And that's not just in terms of the shrimp that Choice Canning is shipping over Here, that's. I mean, just in general, there's absolutely no way that they will ever be staffed enough to take any kind of samples that would represent everything that's coming. You know, if Choice is shipping a container that's £32,000 and only £10,000 of it is antibiotic positive, well, now your chances are even less likely that the FDA is going to find it.
- [31:50]
Ian Urbina
All the things that Josh described to us, the living conditions, illegal labor practices, health and safety violations, antibiotics, all of it, these are things that should have been detected by the inspectors carrying out independent audits, but they weren't. In January 2024, Josh and the rest of management were preparing for a visit by inspectors from Aldi South. Aldi is a huge multinational with 12,000 stores around the world. In the US they also own Trader Joe's. Josh recorded a conversation discussing how to prepare for this inspection.
- [32:28]
Josh Farinella
So basically, we'll call them. When the auditor comes in, we'll call them and say, go, run away and do something else for the day. Yes, sir. All right, Good, good, good. How the hell did you come up with that idea, sir? How the hell did you come up.
- [32:39]
Ian Urbina
With that idea.
- [32:42]
Josh Farinella
Sir?
- [32:42]
Ian Urbina
JT sir.
- [32:43]
Josh Farinella
Keeping my knife on my neck. Ideas will come. What he said is, you know, JT sir has a. Has a knife to my throat about this.
- [32:52]
Ian Urbina
The managers were concerned about the number of workers in the plant on the day of inspection. That's because auditors who oversaw the plant would want to check the number of employees that Choice reported against wage records, available beds, and the amount of workspace on the factory floor to see if there were any concerns related to underpayment or safety. Josh was told that in the past, Choice had rented a facility away from the plant and simply moved excess workers off site to hide them while the inspection took place.
- [33:26]
Josh Farinella
There was no literal knife to that man's neck. To me, that's everybody knowing this is very, very wrong. But make it work for these two days that the auditors are on site.
- [33:38]
Ian Urbina
There wasn't enough time to make the necessary arrangements to move workers off site during the Aldi south inspection. So management came up with another plan. Simply open the back doors and tell the workers to leave the premises for the day.
- [33:51]
Josh Farinella
You know, we'll have to open up the back door of the compound so that we could let people out without having anybody see them.
- [33:57]
Ian Urbina
Josh said that the independent inspectors didn't seem particularly concerned with catching actual violations. As long as things looked good on paper, they were happy.
- [34:06]
Josh Farinella
You know, just show them some pretty stuff. On paper and nobody's going to ask questions about the rest. And you know, in this case, you know, for the Aldi audit, the quality assurance manager said this, you know, 70% of this is, is all lies anyway, just basically put on the good show.
- [34:23]
Ian Urbina
Choice Canning has been able to pass any number of audits and on site inspections. For example, in November 2022, Choice Canning announced it would be the first Indian company to become a corporate member of the Global Seafood Alliance. It often goes by gsa. It's an industry body that promotes responsible practices. The GSA offers its own certification, Best Aquaculture Practices, or bap. This certification means that every stage of a seafood supplier's production line has been inspected and approved. Choice Canning's Amalaporum plant was BAP certified. And Choice said that many of the shrimp farms that supplied Amalaporum were as well.
- [35:07]
Josh Farinella
Well, the one set of books for the auditors said, yes, everything we have is coming from certified farms. And in reality, none of it was.
- [35:16]
Ian Urbina
Given what Josh has seen firsthand. Those certifications only go to show how fundamentally flawed the entire oversight system actually.
- [35:24]
Josh Farinella
Is, because it's all about just getting the piece of paper there. In my experience over in Amalapuram, it was just going through the motions. Nobody truly cared about the process, the procedures, you know, making sure you were putting out seam safe food, that the labor conditions were what they were supposed to be. It was more like going through the motions. And that was all. And it really didn't seem to be like much of a secret to anybody.
- [35:50]
Ian Urbina
During Josh's time at Choice Canning's Amalaporum plant, he received a steady stream of messages about hygiene issues and spoiled products. However, Josh says that when he attempted to improve conditions of the plant, his efforts were stonewalled by senior leadership. To Josh, they seemed mostly concerned with how much revenue the plant was generating.
- [36:13]
Josh Farinella
I think me being hired in that position at the Amalapuram factory was simply to whitewash. The operation was to put a legitimate looking American face on it while it did what it did.
- [36:29]
Ian Urbina
After seeing the conditions at the plant and coming to terms with the scale of the problem, Josh decided that he needed to leave.
- [36:38]
Josh Farinella
My wife and I discussed it and then while she was visiting me in India, you know, we sat down again and we talked and we decided that the day her flight was to come back to the States, it would probably be the best thing for me to book a flight back. You know, at the same time we were sitting at the airport in, in Hyderabad, India, I sent my resignation email from the airport there.
- [37:03]
Ian Urbina
He flew back to the US Retained a lawyer and filed a formal whistleblower complaint to the FDA and other federal agencies. He wasn't sure what good it might do, but he wanted to state on record what he had seen.
- [37:16]
Josh Farinella
I was very surprised with how quickly it took off and, you know, how many people were paying attention to it. One of the biggest things is the Department of Labor has now added shrimp from India to their list of goods produced with forced labor. But what is kind of upsetting, and I knew I ran the risk of kind of being blackballed from the seafood industry, you know, going into it. But where, you know, a year and a half ago, plenty of seafood companies would have been calling me up on a regular basis, asking me to come in and run their quality assurance departments. Now when I submit a resume to any of them, I don't. I can't even get the courtesy of a rejection email. So that, I mean, that's upsetting. But, you know, we'll see. Maybe, maybe that'll change over time.
- [38:01]
Ian Urbina
Josh stayed in contact with some of his colleagues at the plant. One told him he was also quitting. The hours were ruining his marriage and he'd been receiving threats from locals over wage disputes. Josh also reached out to other managers about the Aldi audit. He was curious to know what had happened. Had they simply opened the doors and sent workers to hide for the day? One responded, yes, they had. Exactly, sir. We presented our findings to the Global Seafood alliance, the organization that gives out the best aquaculture practices certification. They said they take them seriously and will investigate if they find evidence of violations. The FDA did not respond to a request for comment. Choice Canning categorically denied Josh Farnell's allegations through their lawyers and said that he should not be trusted because of his criminal record. They claimed that documents provided by Josh were manipulated. We had those documents analyzed by a third party forensic analysis firm. It refuted Choice Canning's claim on the subject of antibiotics. Their lawyers wrote that the company never ships antibiotic shrimp to the US and that the FDA has never stopped their shipments due to antibiotics because the company maintains the highest of quality standards. They said that internal correspondence about Oscar Shrimp does not indicate that antibiotic shrimp was shipped abroad, since this shrimp is tested a second time and likely was found at that stage to be antibiotic free. Finally, their lawyers said that Choice always pays its labor contractors on time. And the plant has passed its labor audits verifying that wages as well as working and wage conditions are proper. You can read their full response@theoutlawocean.com ChoiceCanningResponse the ChoiceCanning shrimp facility in Amalapuram is one specific example of how offshoring seafood production allows companies to hide labor, safety and health violations, things that until now have gone largely unreported. But we can't rely on outliers like Josh Farinella to tell us what's happening from the inside. That's not a model that can possibly scale up to a global level. And to be clear, processing plants are just one part of a multi billion dollar seafood industry that connects the furthest reaches of the so what happens when you follow the entire supply chain from bait to plate? In the coming episodes of the show, we tackle a giant China, the world's seafood superpower. Our groundbreaking investigation reveals brutal human rights abuses, forced labor and sexual assault. That's next time on the Outlaw Ocean. This series is created and produced by the Outlaw Ocean Project. It's reported and hosted by me, Ian Urbina, written and produced by Michael Catano. Our Associate producer is Craig Ferguson. Mix Sound design and original music by Alex Edkins and Graham Walsh. Additional sound recording by Tony Fowler for CBC Podcasts. Our coordinating producer is Fabiola Carletti, Senior Producer Damon Fairless. The executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is the Senior Manager and Arif Nurani is the Director of CBC Podcasts. Special thanks to Josh Farinella and Ben Blankenship. To see more reporting from this story, including the full length print version, copies of internal documents and communications, as well as a documentary film with footage from inside the Amalaporum Factory, please visit theoutlawocean.com and follow the link to India Shrimp a Growing Goliath that was an episode from the outlaw Ocean Season 2, and it's just one of the four new investigations this season. If you liked what you heard, you can find more episodes from the Outlaw Ocean wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop weekly until July 23rd and be sure to follow the Outlaw Ocean feed so you don't miss an episode.
- [42:46]
Josh Farinella
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