Seafood allegedly produced using the forced labour of Uyghur people in China may have been sold at Iceland – and could be on sale now at other British supermarkets, according to an investigation.
Iceland told Sky News it no longer had a relationship with the Chinese supplier in question.
Since 2018, the Chinese government is believed to have moved tens of thousands of Uyghurs from their homes in Xinjiang to other parts of China, as part of a “labour transfer programme”.
Human rights advocates say the programme constitutes forced labour, a charge that China has repeatedly denied. The Chinese embassy did not respond to our request for a comment.
An investigation by non-profit journalism organisation The Outlaw Ocean Project – shared with Sky News – has found that nine large seafood companies in Shandong, a province in east China, have received at least 2,000 Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities from Xinjiang – and that many of them supply the UK.
One of those is Shandong Meijia Group, one of the largest seafood processing companies in China.
Image: Workers inside the Yantai Sanko Fisheries plant in Shandong province. Pic: Douyin
The company had posted an article on its website showing Uyghurs arriving as part of the “integration of the national family”.
After Sky News sent questions to the company, the article was deleted. A manager at the entrance told our reporting team that there were no Uyghur workers.
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But videos posted to Douyin – the Chinese counterpart of TikTok – have been uncovered by Outlaw Ocean and verified by Sky News.
They show Uyghur workers as recently as October 2022, and at another factory as recently as May 2023, at two Meijia Group plants: Meijia Jiayuan and Meijia Keyuan.
Shandong Meijia did not respond to Sky News’s request for comment.
Image: Exhausted Uyghur workers inside the plant in 2021. Pic: Douyin
The Outlaw Ocean Project reviewed hundreds of pages of internal company newsletters, local news reports, a database of Uyghur testimonies, trade data, and satellite and cell phone imagery to verify the location of processing plants.
They also verified that the Douyin users had initially registered in Xinjiang.
Image: Reporter Ian Urbina throws a bottle with interview questions inside at Chinese squid boat. Pic: The Outlaw Ocean Project/James Glancy
Interview questions thrown to crew inside plastic bottles
This investigation was produced by The Outlaw Ocean Project, which focuses on human rights and environmental crimes at sea around the world.
Based on over four years of reporting at sea and on land, including on the high seas near North Korea, West Africa, the Galapagos, and the Falkland islands, the investigation was conducted in collaboration with the New Yorker, and derives from reporting and writing from Ian Urbina, Maya Martin, Sue Ryan, Joe Galvin, Daniel Murphy, Jake Conley and Austin Brush.
To chronicle working conditions on Chinese fishing ships, the reporting team boarded vessels at sea and interviewed crew.
When permitted, they boarded vessels to talk to crew, or came alongside them to interview officers by radio.
In many instances, the Chinese ships got spooked, pulling up their gear and fleeing.
When this happened, the team trailed the ships in a small boat to get close enough to throw aboard plastic bottles weighed down with rice, and containing a pen, cigarettes, hard sweets, and interview questions.
On several occasions, deckhands wrote replies, providing phone numbers for family back home, and then threw the bottles back into the water.
The reporting included interviews with their family members, and with two dozen additional crew members.
Iceland hasn’t received products for ‘significant period’
Meijia’s customers include Iceland, and distributors Fastnet Fish and Westbridge Foods Ltd, according to an archived version of their customer list on their website.
Fastnet Fish has said that as a result of the investigation it had terminated its relationship with Meijia. Westbridge Foods did respond to Sky News’s request for comment.
Iceland appeared to admit that Meijia had, at one point, been a supplier – but a spokesperson told Sky News: “We can confirm that Iceland is not, nor has not for a significant period, received any products from such sites.
“It is Iceland’s policy to be able to act responsibly in all commercial and trading activities to establish that the working conditions of people working for, and within the supply chain, meet relevant international standards.”
Asked by Sky News, the supermarket did not explain when or why it stopped receiving products.
It also said it was working with international auditing organisations, such as the Ethical Trading Initiative and Sedex, on the issue of relocation of Uyghurs in China.
Image: Yantai Sanko Fisheries workers at ‘political education sessions’ at the factory in 2021. Pic: Yantai United Front Work Department
Sainsbury’s ‘working to understand situation’
Uyghur workers were also deployed to other seafood factories run by the Chishan group, a Chinese conglomerate, according to The Outlaw Ocean Project’s research.
The company supplies Lyons Seafoods, which produces branded and private-label seafood for retailers including Sainsbury’s.
Lyons did not respond to Sky News’s request for comment – but its French parent company Labeyrie had previously told the Outlaw Ocean Project that they were “extremely concerned” by the allegations.
A Sainsbury’s spokesperson told Sky News: “All of our suppliers have to meet our high ethical and worker welfare standards.
“If we have any reason to believe there is a situation within our supply chains which is in breach of those standards we take immediate action.
“We are working together with our suppliers and wider industry partners to understand the situation and take the most responsible and appropriate next steps.”
Fish shipments bound for Europe usually pass through Rotterdam – where sometimes they are repackaged in different containers – which can add to the difficulty in tracking shipments.
From there, the seafood shipments arrive at UK ports, such as Felixstowe.
Image: A map showing the supply chain of seafood from China to the UK
‘Human trafficking, wage theft and criminal level of neglect’
As part of a four-year-long investigation, the Outlaw Ocean Project may have revealed other abuses connected to China’s vast fishing fleet – including the story of Daniel Daniel Aritonang, a 20-year-old Indonesian who died from the disease Beriberi after suffering abuse on a Chinese vessel.
Image: Daniel Aritonang
Ian Urbina, the director of the Outlaw Ocean Project, told Sky News: “The human rights and labour crimes – you’re dealing with human trafficking, you’re dealing with death by violence, wage theft, blocking of timely access to medical care, criminal level of neglect in the form of Beriberi, people that are essentially deprived of the key nutrients to be able to survive.
“Vessels that go dark and turn off their transponders and they disappear – all these are well documented crimes as well that are in the marine space.”
Image: Workers being interviewed on board a Chinese squid fishing ship. Pic: Ed Ou
The group that owned the vessel, Rongcheng Wangda, has denied any wrongdoing and has referred the matter to the China Overseas Fisheries Association for investigation. No criminal case been brought.
Image: Chinese government video claiming to show transfer of workers from Xinjiang. Pic: Douyin/Kashgar Media Centre
“The reality is that because it’s out of sight, out of mind, you know, a lot of that is happening over the horizon, quite literally,” David Hammond, chief executive of the NGO Human Rights at Sea, told Sky News.
“Nobody knows what’s going on. So you then have the issue of enforcement and there is a massive lacuna in the enforcement issue from coastal states and international waters.
“And without enforcement, you don’t have a deterrent effect and without deterrent effect, you have impunity.”
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
Mature, developed economies like the UK and US became ever more reliant on cheap imports from China and, in the process, saw their manufacturing sectors shrink.
Large swathes of the rust belt in the US – and much of the Midlands and North of England – were hollowed out.
And to some extent that’s where the story of Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” really began – with the notion that free trade and globalisation had a darker side, a side he wants to remedy via tariffs.
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Trump’s tariffs: Ed Conway analysis
He imposed a set of tariffs in his first term, some on China, some on specific materials like steel and aluminium. But the height and the breadth of those tariffs were as nothing compared with the ones we have just heard about.
Not since the 1930s has the US so radically increased the level of tariffs on all nations across the world. Back then, those tariffs exacerbated the Great Depression.
It’s anyone’s guess as to what the consequences of these ones will be. But there will be consequences.
Consequences for the nature of globalisation, consequences for the US economy (tariffs are exceptionally inflationary), consequences for geopolitics.
Image: Imports from the UK will face a 10% tariff, while EU goods will see 20% rates. Pic: Reuters
And to some extent, merely knowing that little bit more about the White House’s plans will deliver a bit of relief to financial markets, which have fretted for months about the imposition of tariffs. That uncertainty recently reached unprecedented levels.
But don’t for a moment assume that this saga is over. Nothing of the sort. In the coming days, we will learn more – more about the nuts and bolts of these policies, more about the retaliatory measures coming from other countries.
We will, possibly, get more of a sense about whether some countries – including the UK – will enjoy reprieves from the tariffs.
To paraphrase Churchill, this isn’t the end of the trade war, or even the beginning of the end – perhaps just the end of the beginning.
Donald Trump has announced a 10% trade tariff on all imports from the UK – as he unleashed sweeping tariffs across the globe.
Speaking at a White House event entitled “Make America Wealthy Again”, the president held up a chart detailing the worst offenders – which also showed the new tariffs the US would be imposing.
“This is Liberation Day,” he told a cheering audience of supporters, while hitting out at foreign “cheaters”.
He claimed “trillions” of dollars from the “reciprocal” levies he was imposing on others’ trade barriers would provide relief for the US taxpayer and restore US jobs and factories.
Mr Trump said the US has been “looted, pillaged, raped, plundered” by other nations.
Image: Pic: AP
His first tariff announcement was a 25% duty on all car imports from midnight – 5am on Thursday, UK time.
Mr Trump confirmed the European Union would face a 20% reciprocal tariff on all other imports. China’s rate was set at 34%.
The UK’s rate of 10% was perhaps a shot across the bows over the country’s 20% VAT rate, though the president’s board suggested a 10% tariff imbalance between the two nations.
It was also confirmed that further US tariffs were planned on some individual sectors including semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and critical mineral imports.
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6:39
Trump’s tariffs explained
The ramping up of duties promises to be painful for the global economy. Tariffs on steel and aluminium are already in effect.
The UK government signalled there would be no immediate retaliation.
Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said: “We will always act in the best interests of UK businesses and consumers. That’s why, throughout the last few weeks, the government has been fully focused on negotiating an economic deal with the United States that strengthens our existing fair and balanced trading relationship.
“The US is our closest ally, so our approach is to remain calm and committed to doing this deal, which we hope will mitigate the impact of what has been announced today.
“We have a range of tools at our disposal and we will not hesitate to act. We will continue to engage with UK businesses including on their assessment of the impact of any further steps we take.
“Nobody wants a trade war and our intention remains to secure a deal. But nothing is off the table and the government will do everything necessary to defend the UK’s national interest.”
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The EU has pledged to retaliate, which is a problem for Northern Ireland.
Should that scenario play out, the region faces the prospect of rising prices because all its imports are tied to EU rules under post-Brexit trading arrangements.
It means US goods shipped to Northern Ireland would be subject to the EU’s reprisals.
The impact of a trade war would be expected to be widely negative, with tit-for-tat tariffs risking job losses, a ramping up of prices and cooling of global trade.
Research for the Institute for Public Policy Research has suggested more than 25,000 direct jobs in the UK car manufacturing industry alone could be at risk from the tariffs on car exports to the US.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) had said the tariff costs could not be absorbed by manufacturers and may lead to a review of output.
The tariffs now on UK exports pose a big risk to growth and the so-called headroom Chancellor Rachel Reeves was forced to restore to the public finances at the spring statement, risking further spending cuts or tax rises ahead to meet her fiscal rules.
A member of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), David Miles, told MPs on Tuesday that US tariffs at 20% or 25% maintained on the UK for five years would “knock out all the headroom the government currently has”.
But he added that a “very limited tariff war” that the UK stays out of could be “mildly positive”.
He said: “There’s a bit of trade that will get diverted to the UK, and some of the exports from China, for example, that would have gone to the US, they’ll be looking for a home for them in the rest of the world.
“And stuff would be available in the UK a bit cheaper than otherwise would have been. So there is one, not central scenario at all, which is very, very mildly potentially positive to the UK. All the other ones which involve the UK facing tariffs are negative, and they’re negative to very different extents.”
Mature, developed economies like the UK and US became ever more reliant on cheap imports from China and, in the process, saw their manufacturing sectors shrink.
Large swathes of the rust belt in the US – and much of the Midlands and North of England – were hollowed out.
And to some extent that’s where the story of Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” really began – with the notion that free trade and globalisation had a darker side, a side he wants to remedy via tariffs.
More on Donald Trump
Related Topics:
He imposed a set of tariffs in his first term, some on China, some on specific materials like steel and aluminium. But the height and the breadth of those tariffs were as nothing compared with the ones we have just heard about.
Not since the 1930s has the US so radically increased the level of tariffs on all nations across the world. Back then, those tariffs exacerbated the Great Depression.
It’s anyone’s guess as to what the consequences of these ones will be. But there will be consequences.
Consequences for the nature of globalisation, consequences for the US economy (tariffs are exceptionally inflationary), consequences for geopolitics.
Image: Imports from the UK will face a 10% tariff, while EU goods will see 20% rates. Pic: Reuters
And to some extent, merely knowing that little bit more about the White House’s plans will deliver a bit of relief to financial markets, which have fretted for months about the imposition of tariffs. That uncertainty recently reached unprecedented levels.
But don’t for a moment assume that this saga is over. Nothing of the sort. In the coming days, we will learn more – more about the nuts and bolts of these policies, more about the retaliatory measures coming from other countries.
We will, possibly, get more of a sense about whether some countries – including the UK – will enjoy reprieves from the tariffs.
To paraphrase Churchill, this isn’t the end of the trade war, or even the beginning of the end – perhaps just the end of the beginning.