Saving Seafood

Restaurant, catering group nears settlement with Chicken of the Sea on price-fixing suit

May 28, 2019 — A group of restaurants and catering companies have reached a USD 6.5 million (EUR 5.8 million) agreement with San Diego, California, U.S.A.-based Chicken of the Sea and its parent company, Thai Union, to settle a lawsuit alleging price-fixing.

The lawsuit stems from a price-fixing scandal in the U.S. canned tuna market exposed by a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation in which Chicken of the Sea served as the whistleblower. The scandal led to prosecution of Chicken of the Sea’s primary co-conspirators, Bumble Bee Foods and StarKist. Both companies pleaded guilty to criminal charges in cases brought by the DOJ.

Chicken of the Sea’s potential settlement with the restaurants and catering companies, proposed Friday, 24 May, still must be approved by U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California Judge Janis L. Sammartino, who has not yet formally certified the grouping of affected companies involved in the agreement as an official class in the lawsuit. The parties suing claim to represent companies that indirectly purchased packages of tuna in 40-ounce sizes or greater from DOT Foods, Sysco, US Foods, Sam’s Club, Walmart, or Costco from June 2011 through December 2016.

Parties in the so-called “commercial food preparers” class involved in the proposed settlement include Capitol Hill Supermarket, Janet Machen, Thyme Cafe & Market, Simon-Hindi LLC, LesGo Personal Chef, Maquoketa Care Center, A-1 Diner, Francis T. Enterprises d/b/a Erbert & Gerbert’s, Harvesters Enterprises, LLC d/b/a Harvester’s Seafood and Steakhouse, Dutch Village Restaurant, Painted Plate Catering, GlowFisch Hospitality d/b/a Five Loaves Cafe, Rushin Gold LLC d/b/a The Gold Rush, Erbert & Gerbert, Inc., Groucho’s Deli of Raleigh, Sandee’ s Catering, Groucho ‘s Deli of Five Points, and Confetti’s Ice Cream Shoppe.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

SeaWeb Seafood Summit conference program puts focus on social and human rights challenges

April 26, 2019 — Representatives from Walmart, Anova Food, Thai Union, and North Atlantic/Bali Seafood International will be featured speakers at the 2019 SeaWeb Seafood Summit, which will have a major focus on social and human rights challenges in seafood supply chains.

The summit, taking place 10 to 14 June in Bangkok, Thailand, will involve many of the leading voices in the seafood sustainability movement in Asia and globally. Companies taking part in the event will discuss ways they’ve created stronger relationships with supply chain partners and workers, reduced their exposure to risk, and produced a better product to sell through the adoption of sustainability measures in their respective businesses.

The conference’s keynote speaker will be Fair Trade USA CEO Paul Rice, an advocate of “impact sourcing” as a core strategy for both poverty alleviation and sustainable business. Rice is the author of “The Human Face of Sustainability: Empowering Fishers, Farmers, and Workers.” Rice will also serve on a panel with Richard Welford, the founder and chairman of CSR Asia, Walmart Senior Buying Manager Trevyr Lester, and Sarah Hogan, the program officer for the Packard Foundation’s Global Seafood Markets strategy, to discuss successful examples from seafood and other industries of sustainable supply chains. The panelists will share their experiences in using market forces to drive positive impacts on workers, communities, resources, and corporate profits, according to Diversified Communications, which operates the summit. (Editor’s note: Diversified Communications also operates SeafoodSource).

Another featured panel at the summit will investigate the economics of sustainable seafood in Asia, sustainability trends in other Asian markets, and how sustainable practices might come to be better recognized in Asian markets in the future. The panel will include Janice Lao, director of group corporate responsibility and sustainability at The Hongkong & Shanghai Hotels Limited; Rabobank’s Umesh Madhavan; Nobukazu Furuya with AEON TopValu Thailand; Wakao Hanaoka from Seafood Legacy; and Julie Qiu, the marketing director for Australis Aquaculture.

A separate plenary session will look into illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in Asia, and will include Environmental Justice Foundation Co-Founder Steve Trent and Adisorn Promthep, the Director-General of Thaland’s Department of Fisheries. Trent and Promthep will discuss transparency initiatives and how they can be applied in the real-world, studying examples from Thailand and Indonesia.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Chicken of the Sea, Monterey Bay partnership yields first product offering

January 21, 2019 — Thai Union’s Chicken of the Sea Frozen Foods (COSFF) and the Monterey Bay Aquarium have announced the first new product offering produced as part of the duo’s collaboration, which began last May.

The partnership’s SeaChange IGNITE program announced that it has upgraded the rating of Sri Lankan blue swimming crab to a “good alternative” recommendation. The species had previously been part of a fishery improvement project (FIP) aimed at improving the sustainability of the region’s fishing practices.

The SeaChange Ignite program was co-created by Chicken of the Sea and Monterey Bay to promote improvements throughout the supply chain as part of Thai Union’s sustainability initiative. There has been a commitment of $73 million towards the program, providing funding to 2025, with improvements in South-East Asia the primary focus.

Meanwhile, COSFF had initially joined the blue swimming crab FIP in July 2016, alongside its partner Taprobane Seafood Group. COSFF had, at the time, co-financed a harvest control strategy for the region’s crab fisheries.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Walmart resolves anti-trust lawsuit against Chicken of the Sea

May 23, 2018 — Walmart has reached an agreement with Thai Union’s Chicken of the Sea International regarding antitrust claims initially brought forth by the retailer back in October 2016, and later amended in May of 2017.

The terms of the agreement will see Tri-Union Seafoods – which trades as Chicken of the Sea International – pay a cash settlement to Walmart and partner with the retail giant in a series of joint programs and new product promotions. New product innovations will also be launched and featured across Walmart stores in the United States as a result of the agreement, Chicken of the Sea said in a press release.

Groups of American wholesalers, retailers, and foodservice outfits began filing lawsuits in 2015 alleging that the three biggest providers of canned tuna in the United States – Tri-Union Seafoods, StarKist, and Bumble Bee – had conspired to “fix, raise, maintain, and/or stabilize prices for PSPs [packaged seafood products]” in the country. The series of lawsuits, as well as Thai Union’s failed bid to purchase Bumble Bee in 2015, spurred the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to launch its own criminal antitrust investigation, examining claims that the three companies had colluded to increase prices for packaged tuna from 2008-2010, until at least July 2015.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Big seafood companies promise to reduce illegal fishing

December 15, 2016 — Eight of the world’s largest seafood companies have promised for the first time to improve transparency and the traceability of their catches to stop illegal fishing and protect the oceans, they said on Wednesday.

After a meeting organized by the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) between seafood companies’ chief executives and scientists, the CEOs signed an agreement on ocean stewardship.

“The seafood industry cannot thrive on an unsustainable planet, and we will not have a thriving planet with an unsustainable seafood industry,” the eight companies said in a joint statement.

The companies promised to help reduce illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU) and seek to ensure that such products and endangered species are not present in their supply chains.

The companies also promised to eliminate any form of modern slavery including forced and child labor in their supply chains, and to reduce the use of antibiotics in aquaculture.

The seafood companies include the two largest by revenues, Maruha Nichiro and Nippon Suisan Kaisha; two of the largest tuna companies, Thai Union and Dongwon Industries; the two largest salmon farmers, Marine Harvest ASA and Cermaq; and the two largest aquafeed companies, Nutreco unit Skretting and Cargill Aqua Nutrition.

Read the full story at Reuters

Find that fish: Chicken of the Sea launches traceability initiative

September 14, 2016 — Chicken of the Sea’s owner, Thai Union, has been at the center of controversy lately, particularly following reports of ongoing slavery and trafficking in the Thai fishing industry. Investigations from The New York Times, Associated Press and Guardian linked many of these human rights abuses to Thai Union and Chicken of the Sea, according to a Greenpeace report.

Chicken of the Sea’s traceability efforts are a start on its path to increased transparency and sustainability throughout its supply chain. But knowing where a fish was caught or how it was processed doesn’t necessarily solve human rights abuses occurring on the other side of the world.

Increasing numbers of consumers consider a company’s labor practices in their brand purchase decisions. Consumers today demand transparency, ranging from ingredients to fair labor practices. Manufacturers that embrace consumers’ hunger for transparency can achieve better whole chain visibility and traceability.

That effort offers more information about ingredients, suppliers, processing and other company practices that the brand can then share with consumers. Transparency can also help foster brand loyalty among the vast majority of consumers and convince others to pay more for completely transparent products, according to a recent study from Label Insight.

Read the full story from Food Dive

How to Make Sure Your Fish Wasn’t Caught by Slaves

September 8, 2016 — For years, news outlets have been reporting on the systemic use of slavery in commercial fishing in places such as New Zealand and Thailand. With much of the industry’s byproduct ending up in the United States and Europe—according to a report in The Guardian, “The U.S., U.K., and E.U. are prime buyers of this seafood—with Americans buying half of all Thailand’s seafood exports and the U.K. alone consuming nearly 7 percent of all Thailand’s prawn exports.”—there’s a strong possibility that at some point, slave-caught fish has been served on a dinner plate near you. But thanks to blockchain, a technology best known as the basis for Bitcoin, soon there will be a new digital weapon to fight slave labor.

“We want to help support fish that is caught sustainably and verify these claims down the chain to help drive the market for slavery-free fish,” Provenance founder Jessi Baker told the Guardian. Provenance is an organization dedicated to socially responsible consumerism—it recently began piloting a blockchain program with the Co-Op Food group in the United Kingdom. “This pilot shows that complex, global supply chains can be made transparent by using blockchain technology.”

Currently, the only way to track the progress of seafood through the region’s supply chain is with paper records and tagged animals. According to the Guardian, the world’s biggest tuna exporter, the Thai Union, is all for utilizing blockchain technology. “Traceability—which allows us to prove that our fish is caught legally and sustainably and that safe labor conditions are met throughout the supply chain—is vital if we are to interest consumers in the source of their tuna,” the union’s director of sustainability Dr. Darian McBain told the paper.

Read the full story at Food & Wine

Thai Union takes steps to end slavery in its supply chain

June 23, 2016 — In the past week, Thai Union published a Modern Slavery Act Transparency Statement and hosted a meeting with leaders of the Migrant Worker Rights Network, as part of the company’s efforts to address slavery and human rights abuses in its supply chain.

The statement, published in support of the United Kingdom’s Modern Slavery Act of 2015, outlines the activities undertaken by the company to eliminate slavery and human trafficking from its business operations.

According to the report, Thai Union has terminated relationships with 17 suppliers as a result of forced labor or human trafficking violations since the start of 2015. The company also revealed that in 2015, “two serious issues of forced labor were uncovered within the Thai Union supply chain.”

“Thai Union worked with local NGOs, the Issara Institute and Migrant Workers Rights Network to provide humanitarian aid to workers, full compensation of lost benefits, and offers for safe and legal employment within Thai Union factories,” the report said. “Thai Union is committed to demonstrating full transparency and traceability in our supply chain. All supply chains are in the process of being mapped to source, and audited for compliance with quality and labor standards.”

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

THAI UNION SUSPENDS PUBLIC OFFERING FOLLOWING SUBPOENA FROM U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

SEAFOODNEWS.COM — July 23, 2015 — Thai Union suspended their public offering late yesterday in the wake of a subpoena from the Department of Justice to Tri-Union Seafoods LLC, a subsidiary of the tuna giant operating in the United States under the brand Chicken of the Sea. They were asked to provide information to the DOJ’s antitrust division, related to their investigation of the packaged seafood industry.

The preferred public offering was intended to raise funds to finance Thai Union’s $1.5 billion purchase of Bumble Bee Seafoods. 

Thai Union has no comment on the DOJ investigation, other than to say that Chicken of the Sea is cooperating fully with the investigation. Chicken of the Sea continues to operate its business as usual.

In a press release issued last night, Thai Union’s Board of Directors said it “believes it is prudent to await additional clarity on this investigation before proceeding with Thai Union’s Preferential Public Offering announced on July 17, 2015. We have informed the Office of the Securities and Exchange Commission of the temporary suspension of Thai Union’s Preferential Public Offering.”

The Company may decide to resume the Preferential Public Offering after further consideration of the situation and consultation with legal advisor. Investors who have completed their subscriptions to date will have their monies returned as soon as practicable within the specified period.

Shares of Thai Union Frozen Products fell as much as 8 percent to 18.4 baht late yesterday, the lowest since October 30, 2014.