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Western democracies don’t “own” most of the world’s slaves, but we use them regularly. No matter how carefully we study the label or package, we inevitably wear and eat things stained with the blood of slaves. Our governments should make sure we don’t have to — by creating and enforcing stricter regulations.

Aidan McQuade, director of Anti-Slavery International, tells me governments “have the principal responsibility because we’re so ensnared in a web of forced labour that it’s very difficult for any consumer — even the most conscientious one — to avoid being caught up in it.”

Ducking their responsibility to regulate and enforce, many politicians say consumers have the right to choose to buy from companies with slavery in their supply chains. But where slavery’s at stake, the notion of “choice” reveals a galling denial of one of the first and most basic human rights: the right to belong to oneself. No one has the right to choose to keep slaves; nor does one have the right to choose to be complicit in slavery. But complicit is exactly what we are when we buy products that slaves were forced to make.

Unless governments ensure that companies don’t indirectly or directly use slave labour, “ethical businesses … will be undercut by unethical businesses. It’s the curse of all volunteeristic approaches towards this,” McQuade says.

Businesses tell me that they’re doing all the volunteering they need to do. NGOs working to immediately eradicate all slavery aren’t realistic, implies CP Foods, the multinational at the centre of the Guardian revelations; slave boats supply only a “small percentage” of fish for fishmeal, says RT Foods, as if a small amount of slavery is natural.