Last week, I had the privilege of attending the Modern Slavery Intelligence Network (MSIN) Conference at the Tesco Heart Building in Welwyn Garden City. The event brought together experts, campaigners, and industry leaders to discuss one of the most pressing issues in the food and agriculture sector – modern slavery in supply chains.
Modern slavery is not just a distant issue, it is happening here in the UK, particularly in agriculture, food production, construction, and waste disposal. The conference shed light on the key risks facing the sector and how businesses, especially those in farming and food supply, can take practical steps to identify and prevent exploitation.
What is Modern Slavery in the Food Chain?
Modern slavery encompasses a range of exploitative practices, including forced labour, human trafficking, debt bondage, and abusive recruitment practices. In the food sector, this can manifest as:
- Confiscation of identification documents
Workers have their passports or ID documents seized, restricting their freedom to leave employment. - Illegal recruitment fees
Recruiters charge workers excessive fees for visas, travel, or accommodation, indebting them before employment begins. - Withholding wages or payment in kind
Workers receive no wages or are compensated with food and accommodation instead of money. - Threats and violence
Employers use intimidation or physical harm to ensure compliance. - Deceptive job advertisements
Workers are lured with false promises and then trapped in exploitative conditions.
Dame Sara Thornton, former UK Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and now Professor of Modern Slavery Policy at the University of Nottingham, stared the conference by highlighting the Operation Fort – the UK’s largest modern slavery prosecution: hundreds of victims, many from Eastern Europe, were trafficked and forced to work under horrific conditions. The case exposed significant risks in industries reliant on low-paid, seasonal, or migrant labour, including food production.
How Does Modern Slavery Infiltrate Supply Chains?
Speakers at the conference outlined several ways modern slavery can take root in supply chains:
- Recruitment of vulnerable individuals
Criminal networks target homeless people and those with substance dependencies, offering work that turns out to be exploitative. - Debt bondage
Workers become trapped in jobs after being charged excessive fees for visas, travel, or accommodation. - Poor oversight of seasonal worker visas
Weak monitoring allows exploitative practices to go undetected. - Misuse of subcontracting
Extended supply chains make it easier for unethical labour providers to operate unnoticed.
The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) plays a crucial role in protecting workers. However, as of July 2018, there were 36 Labour Abuse Prevention Officers (LAPOs) trained and authorised to use Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) powers. Given that a 2024 estimate suggested there were 19,125 potential victims of modern slavery in the UK, the ratio of inspectors to potential victims underscores the need for businesses to proactively ensure ethical practices within their supply chains.
Why Does This Matter for the Food Industry?
Beyond being a human rights issue, modern slavery poses serious risks for businesses, including:
- Legal liability
Under the Modern Slavery Act 2015, companies must publish an annual modern slavery statement, detailing steps taken to combat exploitation. The UK government has proposed reforms to strengthen this legislation, including mandating specific reporting areas, requiring organisations to publish their statements on a government-run registry, and introducing financial penalties for non-compliance. - Reputational damage
Exposure of worker exploitation can lead to loss of consumer trust, contracts, and investors. - Operational disruption
Discovering forced labour in the supply chain may necessitate severing ties with suppliers, causing financial and logistical challenges.
At the conference, Jakub Sobik of the Modern Slavery & Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre emphasised that businesses often look for clear cases of “slavery” rather than examining worker conditions holistically. Instead, companies should ask: Are workers being treated with dignity and respect?
What Can Businesses Do?
Policies alone are insufficient. Businesses must take active steps to mitigate risks of modern slavery in their supply chain.
1. Conduct Proper Risk Assessments
Cristina Talens of the Wilberforce Business Academy outlined a three-step process for social audits and risk assessments: On-site management interviews to assess company policies and awareness around modern slavery. Speaking with workers about wages, conditions and treatment and finally, documentation.
2. Strengthen Supply Chain Oversight
Companies must go beyond surface-level checks and take practical steps to prevent modern slavery:
- Set realistic margins
If a supplier offers exceptionally low prices, scrutinise how they achieve such costs. Unethical cost-cutting often involves exploited labour. As Cristina Talens highlighted, businesses need to review their own margins and be realistic about production costs to ensure ethical practices. - Limit subcontracting
Reducing the number of subcontractors enhances transparency and reduces the risk of exploitation in the supply chain, as noted by Emily Kenway. - Collaborate with industry partners
Working together spreads the burden of due diligence and allows companies to share intelligence on high-risk suppliers, as emphasised by Jakub Sobik.
3. Utilise Technology to Identify Risks
New tools are emerging to help businesses identify modern slavery risks in their supply chain:
- Just Good Work, presented by Quintin Lake from FiftyEight, is a mobile app aimed at educating migrant workers and job seekers about fair recruitment and employment practices. It provides guidance on the employment journey, helping users make informed decisions and enables anonymous reporting of exploitation.
- WorkerBot AI, presented by Dr Ser-Huang Poon from the University of Manchester, is a platform similar in principle to Chat GPT, but different, as it focuses on seasonal workers who can asks questions about visa applications and their employment rights. Given the sensitive information it gathers, and the vulnerability of its users, WorkerBot was developed together with medical professionals to train the platform on how to interact with its users.
- Inspectorio’s AI-powered risk assessment tools, presented by Katrina Duck from Traceability & ESG at Inspectorio, assists businesses in monitoring and improving various aspects of their supply chain, thereby helping to identify and mitigate risks associated with modern slavery.
For farmers and food producers, modern slavery isn’t just a distant issue, it’s a real risk that must be actively managed. With new laws on the horizon, businesses need to collaborate and go beyond policies by taking active steps to ensure their supply chains are ethical.