Forced labor in the shrimp industry, and a whistleblower's efforts to expose it

Boston Globe

10 hours ago

Joshua Farinella, formerly the general manager of the plant in Amalapuram, India.
Ben Blankenship/The Outlaw Ocean Project
Farinella's dream quickly turned into a nightmare. He soon discovered that the plant's largely female employees were effectively trapped on the compound, routinely underpaid, and forced to live in inhumane, unsanitary conditions. The managers were also misleading auditors and processing shrimp with banned antibiotics. It soon dawned on him that he'd been hired as an American face to 'whitewash' a forced-labor factory.
Over several months, Farinella meticulously gathered evidence that he brought to The Outlaw Ocean team. The results of that investigation are the subject of the fifth episode of The Outlaw Ocean Podcast, Season 2. The podcast is available on all major streaming platforms. For transcripts, background reporting, and bonus content, visit
Female workers in full PPE work grueling hours processing shrimp at Choice Canning Plant #4. Some reported they had not had a day off work in over two years.
Ben Blankenship/The Outlaw Ocean Project
In recent years, India has exploded as the dominant source of shrimp for much of the world, with support from its government through subsidies and loosened foreign investment restrictions. In 2021, India exported more than $5 billion of shrimp globally and was responsible for nearly a quarter of the world's shrimp exports. Choice Canning is one of the largest Indian suppliers in the market, with corporate offices in two big Indian cities, Kochi and Chennai, as well as in Jersey City, N.J.
Choice Canning categorically denied Farinella's claims and said that the company never underpaid workers, prevented them from leaving without permission, or maintained subpar living conditions.
On any given day, there might be more than 650 workers at the plant, typically hired by third-party contractors. Hundreds of the workers lived locally in Andhra Pradesh and went home at the end of each day. The rest were migrant workers recruited from impoverished corners of the country who lived at the plant. A security guard was usually posted outside near the building's front door. Farinella found migrant workers living on the compound in deplorable circumstances, like shared beds with bedbug-infested mattresses. There were also dangerous conditions, including a secret dorm above the plants' ammonia compressors. He realized there were hundreds more people living on site than the paperwork accounted for, and they could not freely leave.
At Choice Canning plant #4 in Amalapuram, India, in a hidden, off-books men's dorm located on top of an ammonia compressor shed, some workers were forced to sleep on the floor because of a lack of beds.
Joshua Farinella
At 3 a.m. on November 11, 2023, a manager sent Farinella a WhatsApp message informing him that a woman had been found running through the plant's water treatment facility. 'She was searching for a way out of here,' the manager wrote. 'Her contractor is not allowing her to go home.' The woman made it as far as the main gate but was turned back by guards.
Forbidding workers to leave their plants is a violation of the Indian constitution and also likely violates the country's penal code, according to the
The rear wall of the factory grounds, as seen here through the plant's security cameras, was the site of a reported escape by one of the migrant workers. After the incident, the plant management ordered the walls to be "repaired" so that no other workers could get out.
Ben Blankenship/The Outlaw Ocean Project
On January 3, 2024,
reported that a group of about 70 workers, many of them women, marched to a police station in the Andhra Pradesh province to demand that action be taken against a labor contractor at their workplace, the nearby Choice Canning shrimp factory.
The workers alleged that the plant's labor contractor stole approximately $2,600 in wages, equivalent to about two years of an average worker's salary. They also demanded a manager be charged for abusive language under Indian legislation that seeks to prevent hate crimes against members of underprivileged castes — many of the workers were members of India's lowest caste, called Dalits, or untouchables. After local media covered the incident, Choice Canning's human resources officer emailed Farinella to say they had already properly paid a contractor, who then withheld payment from the workers. Following police intervention, the contractor repaid roughly $1,600 to the workers.
Farinella was concerned when he found workers sleeping on the floor, but he said he and others struggled to get authorization to improve conditions.
A few weeks later during a recorded conversation with two labor contractors for Choice Canning, he discovered that 150 workers had not had a day off in a year. It was also hard, he said, to tell how long employees spent working. A human resources executive admitted candidly in a Zoom meeting recorded by Farinella how she planned to modify attendance records and timecards in preparation for an upcoming audit by a German supermarket chain.
Workers peel shrimp at an off-books peeling shed for Choice Canning in Amalapuram, India in February of 2024.
Joshua Farinella
Processing seafood is a race against the clock to prevent spoilage, so the Choice Canning plant in Amalapuram 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 deliver 40 shipping containers full of packaged shrimp every single day.
The same week that the whistleblower documents were published by
After leaving his job at Choice Canning in February 2024, Farinella returned to the United States and filed whistleblower complaints to several federal agencies. These complaints allege a variety of food safety violations, including that the company knowingly and illegally exported shrimp that had tested positive for antibiotics to major American brands in violation of federal law.
The shrimp processed at the plant came from nearby aquaculture farms like this one. Farinella said it was often unclear which farms supplied the plant because deliveries from certified and uncertified farms were routinely commingled.
Ben Blankenship/The Outlaw Ocean Project
Farinella's whisteblowing has had impact. In 2024, the US Department of Labor placed India's shrimp industry into the 'forced labor' category in its
This April, President Trump signed an executive order promoting domestic fishing and seafood production, including by raising tariffs on Indian shrimp. The US shrimp industry commended the decisions, suggesting that federal agencies and the administration may be responding — directly or indirectly — to the types of abuses Farinella exposed.
But for Farinella himself, his decision to speak out has come with a personal cost. 'Now when I submit a resume, I can't even get the courtesy of a rejection email,' he said in a recent interview. Still, he has been struck by the impact his decision to reveal the industry's dirty secrets has had.
'I was very surprised with how quickly it took off and how many people were paying attention to it,' he said. Maybe, he still hopes, he has helped push the industry toward necessary change.