Saving Seafood

Hawaii Court Hears Case On Legality Of Foreign Fishing Labor

September 21, 2020 — The Hawaii Supreme Court heard arguments Friday on the legality of granting licenses to foreign workers in Hawaii’s longline commercial fishing fleet, which for years has been under scrutiny after an Associated Press investigation revealed claims of human trafficking and questionable labor practices.

The case involves the issuance of Hawaii state commercial fishing licenses to individual foreign fishermen who are not “lawfully admitted” to the United States.

State law says only those legally in the country can get licenses to catch and sell marine life, but the workers do not have visas to enter the U.S. so they are ordered to live onboard the fishing boats by federal officials. They must eat, sleep and work on the boats, often for years at a time, and are subject to deportation.

Friday’s hearing stems from a petition that was filed by a Native Hawaiian fisherman who sought to have the state enforce a statute that declares only people who are in the U.S. legally can acquire commercial fishing licenses.

The petition was denied by the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, which issues the permits, and a lower court upheld the ruling before the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

Read the full story at Hawaii Public Radio

The human impact of organized crime in fisheries extends far beyond the ocean

September 1, 2020 — Despite the name, organized crime in fisheries is not only about fishing. While illegal fishing is a serious problem across many regions of the world, organized crime in the fisheries sector extends much farther. It occurs globally throughout the entire fisheries value chain: on-shore; at-sea; at the coastal interface; and in cyberspace. Regardless of where it occurs or how it happens, its harmful effects take a massive toll on human populations worldwide.

Organized crime in the fisheries sector can take various forms including drug and human trafficking, fraudulent catch documentation, money laundering and corruption — crimes that have potentially dire humanitarian implications. These crimes are profit-driven, diverting government revenue to the shadow blue economy at the expense of coastal communities and the pursuit of key sustainable development goals such as zero hunger, zero poverty and peace, justice and strong institutions. These crimes also directly can endanger those who are exploited in their perpetration.

People in many coastal nations, particularly developing countries, depend on the fisheries sector for food and jobs. Large ocean nations are particularly vulnerable to disruptions in the sector, as recently exposed by the impacts of COVID-19. Criminal networks operating in the fisheries sector exacerbate the economic dislocation of local coastal communities, threaten already tenuous food security and divert much-needed state revenue. But there is hope: effectively tackling organized crime in fisheries will help foster a sustainable ocean economy which, in turn, will benefit communities reliant on the ocean and its resources.

Read the full story at GreenBiz

FCF-linked vessels outed by US government as likely using forced labor

August 18, 2020 — The U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Trade has placed a Withhold Release Order (WRO) on all seafood harvested by the Taiwanese-owned, Vanuatu-flagged fishing vessel Da Wang “due to reasonable suspicion of forced labor on the vessel.”

The WRO will require detention of seafood harvested by the Da Wang at all U.S. ports of entry. Importers of any detained shipments “will have an opportunity to export their shipments or submit proof to CBP that the merchandise was not produced with forced labor,” according to a CBP press release.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

New company offers social responsibility benchmarking for seafood industry

April 15, 2020 — Seafood companies looking to demonstrate their commitment to environmentally sustainable fishing can choose from an array of assessments, audits, and certifications. But when they decide to show their dedication to treating workers well, they’re left with few options.

Poor working conditions at sea are rampant, and numerous reports have emerged in recent years of labor abuse and human rights violations, spurring a reckoning within the industry.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ILO Says Working Conditions Improve in Thai Seafood Sector

March 10, 2020 — A report issued Tuesday by the U.N.’s International Labor Organization credits Thailand with improving working conditions in the fishing and seafood processing industry, but says that serious abuses including forced labor remain.

The report is a follow-up to one published in 2018, and compares the workers situations from earlier surveys to one conducted last year.

Thailand’s seafood sector accounts for billions of dollars in export earnings annually and employ more than 350,000 workers.

However, the industry began facing the threat of trade sanctions from Western nations after media exposure in 2014 of poor working conditions and especially the exploitation of ‘fishing slaves’ — forced labor.

In response, Thailand’s government began instituting reform measures, most effectively by strengthening its legal, policy and regulatory framework, the report says.

But the measures have failed to substantially cut the use of forced labor, it says. Extrapolating from the 2019 survey of workers, it estimates that 14% of those engaged in fishing and 7% of those in seafood processing were subject to some form of forced labor.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New York Times

Retailers, brands refusing to pay more for slavery-free seafood

December 5, 2019 — Few buyers of seafood from Thailand are building the cost of social and environmental compliance into the prices they’re paying, undermining efforts to keep slavery and other labor abuse issues out of the supply chain, according to a new report from Praxis Labs, funded by the non-governmental organizations Humanity United and the Freedom Fund.

The report, “Tracking Progress: Assessing Business Responses to Forced Labour and Human Trafficking in the Thai Seafood Industry,” investigated how industry responded to the exposure of labor and human rights abuses in the Thai seafood sector, which were exposed in the past five years by The Associated Press and The Guardian.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

New film, “Buoyancy,” tackles issue of slavery in Thai seafood industry

August 19, 2019 — An Australian filmmaker is hoping that his debut feature film entitled, “Buoyancy,” will help to raise greater awareness of human trafficking and slavery on Thai fishing vessels.

Rodd Rathjen’s award-winning film highlights the plight of thousands of migrant Cambodian workers trapped in modern slavery in the Thai seafood industry. Shot in Cambodia in the Khmer and Thai languages, the film centers on the plight of an impressionable 14-year old Cambodian boy, who sets out to escape poverty by finding work in a Thai factory, but finds himself sold by a broker and enslaved on a fishing trawler. The result is a harrowing exposition of a reality that remains an issue for the Thai industry, despite ongoing efforts to combat it.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Slave labor is used to catch fish. This tech aims to stop it.

June 13, 2019 — New technology is making advocates and law enforcement optimistic that they might finally have a chance at freeing men held captive at sea on large commercial fishing vessels.

The men [and it is almost always men] who get forced into slavery aboard those ships have often gone willingly, seeking work, says Val Farabee, director of research at Liberty Shared, an organization that fights human trafficking. But once isolated at sea, their wages are withheld and they’re subjected to violent, bleak working conditions for years.

Forced labor and slavery are terms used interchangeably by human trafficking experts to refer to people working against their will. Though well documented in ships that fish illegally, the fishing industries’ dizzying network of enforcement and regulation, as well as the vastness of the oceans, make it difficult for law enforcement to help those trapped on such ships.

It’s unclear how many people are held on fishing boats, but an estimated 21 million people are trapped in enslaved labor around the world, according to the International Labour Organization.

Read the full story at National Geographic

MSC addresses forced labor, process issues in standards update

August 31, 2018 — The Marine Stewardship Council has announced an overhaul of its certification process after a review that lasted more than two years.

The changes include a new requirement that MSC-certified fisheries declare they are free from forced labor and child labor, and changes to the timeline of both when stakeholder input is accepted and to the dispute resolution process between parties seeking an MSC certification and those who have objections to an individual certification.

MSC Fisheries Standard Director Rohan Currey said introduction of updates to MSC’s Fisheries Certification Process and General Certification Requirements came after an organizational review that began in late 2015.

“The Marine Stewardship Council is a listening organisation and this review began in response to feedback from partners and stakeholders on the complexity of the assessment process and the resources required to engage with it,” Currey said. “To address this feedback, we aimed to reduce complexity and increase effectiveness of stakeholder engagement whilst maintaining the credibility and robustness of the whole process.”

Most prominent among the changes is MSC’s new requirement that by 31 August, 2019, all fisheries in the MSC program must complete and submit a Certificate Holder Forced and Child Labour Policies, Practices, and Measures, detailing the measures they have in place to mitigate the presence of forced or child labor. If the deadline is not met, the fishery will no longer be eligible for certification and any existing fishery certificates it has from the MSC will be suspended.  Fishing and supply chain companies and their subcontractors that have been successfully prosecuted for forced labor violations will not be eligible to participate in the MSC program for two years after their conviction.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Study develops new method for identifying risk of forced labor in seafood supply chains

July 26, 2018 –A recent study, published 25 July, has developed a method to identify areas with high risks of forced labor throughout the seafood supply chain.

Published in Science Advances, the study – over the course of five years – developed a framework with five separate components that can allow companies to “efficiently and effectively assess” the risk of forced labor in supply chains. The framework utilizes existing data on supply chains as well as some of the same traceability technologies used in food safety to track worker conditions.

“The seafood sector has among the world’s most complex supply chains and utilizes sophisticated technology to track food safety conditions,” said Dr. Katrina Nakamura, lead author of the study and co-founder of the Sustainability Incubator. “We wondered if the technology could also be used to collect data on working conditions. Our report shows the idea bears out. Companies in our study could see, for the first time, where conditions met minimum principles, were unknown, or were inadequate.”

Using data collected from UN institutions, NGOs, and seafood companies with interviews of workers on fishing vessels and in processing plants in Asia, the study developed a metric to identify working conditions in supply chains. Then, 18 seafood companies used the data to screen 118 products within the framework developed, which has been dubbed the “Labor Safe Screen” (LSS).

“Our findings also demonstrate that human rights due diligence may be added to fishing fleets and certification programs for seafood sustainability,” Dr. Nakamura said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source