I tried to buy my wife a ring with rubies in it - Tiffany’s (and presumably almost every other reputable jeweler) boycott rubies because the farmed ones are so easy to produce they are not really valuable; and the free range ones come from countries with questionable politics and ethics, much like “blood diamonds”.
African children mining cobalt (used in production of lithium)
Thai slavery produced seafood, featuring actual no poop slavery and human trafficking.
When they say “slavery” they mean, kidnappings, imprisonment, rape, beatings and all of the human misery we associate with the term. Not just “volunteer work = slavery.”
gee, just about every diamond in the world comes from a company with “questionable politics and ethics” but I dont see Tiffany’s switching to CZ anytime soon.
Slavery and shrimp’s time might be running out. Thankfully.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/fake-shrimp/477120/
How could that possibly be profitable? :dubious:
My guess is that it’s profitable because container shipping is relatively cheap, while labor is expensive. And processing shrimp is labor intensive enough that it’s worth it not to process it in an expensive first-world country like Norway.
Not when they have to keep them frozen it aint.
Is it even possible to process frozen shrimp?
It is easier to gut (clean) shrimp when they are partially frozen.
Cut flowers should be added to the list. What with the ever-increasing sales of cuts, it has prompted countries to set up greenhouses to supply the demand. These flowers must arrive at wholesalers at peak condition, and without a blemish to mar their salability. That requires MANY petrochemicals, and even though workers are gowned, masked, etc., they are exposed to some pretty nasty products. Lord knows they probably don’t get much per stem, seeing as how you can buy a bunch/bouquet of flowers just about anywhere these days for as low as $2.99 or $3.99. Read Flower Confidential by Amy Stewart, some sections of the book really do “take the bloom off the rose.”
To be fair and balanced, some flower growers DO try to be as green as possible, but they are in the minority.
I am surprised no one has mentioned it yet:
Any kind of birth control product (except something used to help with natural family planning).
Be Fruitful and Multiply Saith the Lord.
Perhaps no one has mentioned it because (almost) no one here thinks that birth control is ethically questionable?
Guess that depends on the source of your ethics, though I’ll admit when I first started reading the post, I thought it was a reference to how drugs like Premarin (PREgnant MAre URINe) are made.
What makes you think religion, particularly Western religion, has anything to do with ethics? They’re, if anything, antithetical.
You have to be a skeptical consumer. There are all kinds of promotions printed on cans of tuna, but you never get the ‘free dolphin’ they advertise. I’ve complained, but Big Tuna does what Big Tuna’s gonna do.
Not just almonds, tree nuts in general. One of the big things is the orchards need massive amouns of water for 7-10 years before they start producing. Invariably the proucers are offsetting huge revenues from existing orchards to expand. I have a couple friends in the biz, they are often expanding fearing the huge tax bills that will follow if they are not. Given the option, they expand, demanding more water.lather, rinse, repeat. They are also high dollar, low perishability items with decent export markets.
I dont blame them for operating the way they do, but at some point they are going to hit a wall, and they are accellerating at it hoping it never pops up.
Just in case anyone wants to play the “what about the farmers” card, there no scraping by tree nut farmers. Most of these guys got ag degrees and stacked an MBA on top of it and havent touched a tractor since grandpa took them for a ride on one 25 years ago.
Pornography. It can run the spectrum from (IMO) perfectly ethical to unquestionably unethical. There are types that can be considered questionable.
Great, now look what you’ve done! 
Palm oil is a big one. In Indonesia, corrupt government officials look the other way as palm oil ranchers literally light protected forests on fire, destroying habitat and kicking off peat bog fires that can burn for months, which spreads air pollution throughout the region and spews massive amounts of CO[sub]2[/sub] into the atmosphere.
Years of Living Dangerously spent a fair amount of time on this.
Unless the alternative of almods is planting nothing, they’re not stealing water. They use similar ammounts of water and need it for less time than other usual crops.
Free-range pron?