Class Action Lawsuit Links Cat Food To Slavery

Your cat food may be made with slave labor and some lawyers are trying to do something about it.

However you feel about class-action lawsuits — and cat food — I’d wager you’re probably anti-slavery. A lawsuit just filed in California federal court by a class of cat-food consumers posits that California’s consumer-protection laws may be an effective weapon against southeast Asian slavery. What’s the connection?

Way back in late July, the New York Times ran a lengthy feature titled “‘Sea Slaves’: The Human Misery That Feeds Pets and Livestock.” The piece explained that in Thailand, where unemployment is below one percent, there’s a shortage of fishing-boat workers. As a result, human traffickers frequently deposit their victims at Thai fishing ports, where the victims are allegedly forced into years of involuntary servitude aboard fishing boats. The feature says of the conditions on board these boats: “those who fled recounted horrific violence: the sick cast overboard, the defiant beheaded, the insubordinate sealed for days below deck in a dark, fetid fishing hold.” You can read the piece for more grisly details, but all this is a long way of saying what the Times put right in its headline: these people are slaves.

And what of the fish they pull out of the South China Sea?

Well, the Times article draws at least this link: According to one conscribed fishermen, “most of the forage fish on the final boat where he was held in bondage was destined for a cannery called the Songkla Canning Public Company.”  The Times says that Songkla Canning is a subsidiary of Thai Union Frozen Products, which turns many tons of its fish into cat and dog food that’s eventually sold in the United States under the popular brand names Fancy Feast, Iams, and Meow Mix.

In other words, you may be feeding your furry friends the fruits of slave labor.

Enter Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, a national plaintiffs’ firm with a self-described “mission of taking on important cases that implicate the public interest.”

Last week, Hagens Berman filed a complaint in United States District Court for the District of Central California, alleging that Nestlé (which owns Fancy Feast) had violated three California consumer-protection laws by using fish caught by slaves for its Fancy Feast cat food.

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The complaint names class representatives: individuals who purchased Fancy Feast cat food but say they would not have done so if Nestlé had disclosed its alleged slave-sourcing. It discusses research suggesting that consumers generally are willing to pay more for a product that’s certified to be the result of fair labor practices — and that they generally won’t buy a product at all if they know it’s the result of human rights abuses. And it alleges that “while Fancy Feast packaging states that it is a product of Thailand, a consumer reviewing the Fancy Feast packaging will find no mention of the likelihood that forced labor was used to catch the seafood going into the product.”

All in all, the complaint alleges, using slavery-sourced seafood without disclosing that fact on Fancy Feast packaging amounts to an unfair trade practice, a material misrepresentation about Fancy Feast cat food, and a material omission constituting false advertising.

I know nothing about California consumer-protection law, so I won’t attempt to handicap these claims on their merits. I do feel confident saying, however, that Nestlé very likely wants this case to go away. After all, Nestlé generally boasts “an extensive human rights program designed to protect human rights within its businesses” — and that’s using Hagens Berman’s phrasing, not Nestlé’s.

Whatever its merits and whatever its eventual result, this is certainly an interesting lawsuit. For starters, using just consumer-protection laws, it might make inroads against some horrendous human-rights abuses. And it serves as a reminder both that often-toothless human-rights treaties aren’t the only tools in the human-rights toolbox, and that major NGOs like Amnesty International aren’t the only ones wielding the tools. Indeed, private public-interest firms like Hagens Berman are out there doing their part, too, and doing so in creative ways that — who knows? — might even make more of a difference.


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Sam Wright is a dyed-in-the-wool, bleeding-heart public interest lawyer who has spent his career exclusively in nonprofits and government. If you have ideas, questions, kudos, or complaints about his column or public interest law in general, send him an email at PublicInterestATL@gmail.com.