The following letter was sent to IntraFish by Buck Gibbons in response to our weekly podcast.
John, did I interpret this accurately?
In your Friday podcast regarding the Indian shrimp issue, you first mentioned that “people were being enslaved!” And then you go on to say that “people are being taken from far away, put into a factory and not allowed to leave. I mean, let’s not lose this point, folks, this is some horrible, horrible stuff, you know, it hurts to be associated with it….if you’re any company or whatever…..I’m not going up on the moral high horse, that’s no where I want to be, but ya, it still astounds me….."
My thoughts are that you and all of us, as it pertains to slave labor, SHOULD be on the moral high horse. If not in this case, then when?
Don’t sell yourself short in terms of your editorial license and capacity to influence this issue. I certainly plan on doing what I can to shed light on this.
Take for instance the fact that we were paid $0.50 per pound for sockeye in Bristol Bay last year, while those workers who processed our salmon in Naknek received $18 per hour for straight time and $27 an hour for overtime.
And here we are, competing for the center of the plate with another protein whose processors are enslaved, indentured, paid $4.22 per day, held against their will and are sleeping on the floor!
I’m not sure that there is any seat in the house other than the one atop the moral high horse! Anything short of that, in my mind at least, lends itself to some measure of complicity.
