Police arrested three men on Thursday suspected of enslaving 200 migrants on a British flower farm in what officials called one of their largest crackdowns on the modern slave trade.

The workers - mostly men from Lithuania, Romania and Bulgaria - are receiving help from charities after a raid on the farm in Cornwall in southwestern England, local police said...

At least 13,000 people are estimated by the government to be victims of forced labour, sexual exploitation and domestic servitude - but police say the true figure is likely far higher...

While police raids on sites such as poultry farms and food processing plants have been well publicised, this case may make the public think twice about where else forced labour may lurk, said [...] a spokesman for Anti-Slavery International.

"Most people will not think about slavery when they buy or receive flowers next week on Valentine's Day," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. "Very dark practices can lie behind such seemingly innocent products."