SEAI’s Letter to the Associated Press

March 28, 2024

Mr. Tom Berman, Editor
Associated Press

Dear Mr. Berman:

On behalf of the Seafood Exporters Association of India, a group comprising companies that export shrimp to the U.S. market, I am writing to take issue with a series of factual inaccuracies and errors in reporter Martha Mendoza’s recent article on our industry, as well as to raise concerns about the troubling way that story was put together.

Ms. Mendoza never contacted our group at any time, and so we have been obliged to ourselves retrace the various situations and settings that are described in her piece.  We discovered many disturbing discrepancies.

For example, she publicly accused one of our members of workplace abuses that in fact occurred at an entirely different company, one that plays no part in the export market. She reported that another member company “destroyed critical ecosystems” in mangrove areas, yet the photography AP used for that anecdote is not a mangrove region at all and is in fact a regulated location that has authorization from the Indian government’s environmental authorities. Ms. Mendoza wrote that one of our members released wastewater into local fields, but AP’s photography shows that she was in fact at a location nearly 50 miles away from the company’s actual operations.

The report from Corporate Accountability Lab, on which AP’s reporting heavily relies, is almost entirely unsubstantiated in connection with any specific company. Instead, nearly all of the incidents and circumstances described in CAL’s report lack the basic detail such as who, what, where, and when the incidents are supposed to have occurred. We can find no evidence in Ms. Mendoza’s reporting that AP made any effort whatsoever to verify any of the details, situations, individuals, or companies to which the CAL report alludes.

Here are some additional specifics on these and other aspects on which we are hoping for some explanation from you:

• Prior to contacting our member company, Nekkanti, Ms. Mendoza confronted a wide range of its customers with accusations that a Nekkanti facility lacked “adequate safety and hygiene protections” and showed them lurid photos of worker injuries she blamed on Nekkanti. Again, she stated all this to those customers as plain fact. But her claims were entirely false. The operation to which she was referring was not part of Nekkanti’s business at all. How do you justify that, and what steps can we expect from you to set the record straight with those customers?
• Ms. Mendoza also claimed to those same customers, again before ever attempting contact with Nekkanti, that its “workers are under guard and are not allowed to leave more than once a month.” This too is demonstrably untrue, as Nekkanti specified to Ms. Mendoza once they finally got in touch with her. That included entry/exit logs, and the nonexistence of any such complaint lodged by any Nekkanti employee, despite multiple methods available for them to do so. Yet none of that was included in the article, and AP has made no effort to set the record straight with the customers it so badly misled. What steps will you take to correct that damage?
• AP’s article claims a member company of ours, Wellcome, dug shrimp ponds in mangrove areas, “destroying critical ecosystems” at a location with “abusive working conditions.”

Again, the accompanying AP photographs are not a mangrove area at all but instead a lawful and fully regulated operation, with prior approval from the government’s relevant regulatory agency (MPEDA) – as the attached permit shows. What’s more, mangrove areas are entirely unsuitable for aquaculture because the soil is too acidic for that purpose – facts we would have gladly explained to AP had you reached out.

• AP’s article repeats a claim from CAL inferring that Wellcome uses antibiotics in its shrimp operations. That too is entirely false and Wellcome does not use antibiotics in any of its shrimp farms. In reality, the company uses probiotic systems to cultivate beneficial microbes that help maintain shrimp health and water quality. All of that company’s harvested shrimp are subject to two- or three-stage antibiotic testing to ensure no antibiotics are used. Those test reports for each batch of processed shrimp are readily available for verification, though apparently Ms. Mendoza made no such effort.
• The article also depicts Wellcome operations in its accompanying video in an erroneous way. From the 3:03 to 4:44 time stamp, a local official named Koyya Sampath Rao, from Jonnalagaruvu village, claims that a canal from the factory has released wastewater into the nearby stream, generating pollution. But at the 3:18 to 3:19 time stamp, AP uses harvest clips of our plant in Kamanagaruvu village in the East Godavari district—which is nearly 50 miles away from Jonnalagaruvu village.
• Similarly, the article reports that 57 acres of rice paddy were converted to shrimp processing, releasing wastewater, and polluting a local village. Again, this situation has nothing whatsoever to do with Wellcome nor any shrimp export company – facts that are entirely concealed from readers.
• The article states, “Among the trucks being loaded with the shrimp at a pond in the village was one with a large sign: ‘Wellcome KingWhite.’” Yet in the accompanying photo, that vehicle is shown at the MPEDA-approved farm in Kamanagruvu village – more than 50 miles away from the harvest site that Ms. Mendoza describes.

All of these various errors have a thread in common, which is that Ms. Mendoza is deceptively conflating well-regulated companies that operate state-of-the-art facilities and export to the U.S. market with rogue actors that do not export to the U.S. market.

It has something else in common too. That framing, which maligns all Indian shrimp operations with no distinctions made, is also the same rhetoric used by the activist foundations that are directly funding AP’s reporting on this topic. AP claims its editorial judgment is unaffected by the high seven-figure donations it has received for years from those groups. But in light of the details above, we must ask if you still stand by that declaration?

Our organization has tried several times now to reach Ms. Mendoza and has heard no reply from her. But we would appreciate your thoughts on these specifics and are requesting published correction and clarification on the many errors and omissions we have detailed. We would also be grateful for some explanation on how all this got past AP editors and how you intend to repair the wrong information Ms. Mendoza trafficked to our corporate customers.  

With kind thanks for your swift attention to the matter, I am,

Sincerely yours,

Pawan Kumar, President
Seafood Exporters Association of India

CC: Ms. Julie Pace, Executive Editor, Associated Press