Saving Seafood

Labor unions emerge as voice for migrant fishermen in Southeast Asia

April 21, 2020 — Despite legal and corporate barriers, trade unions are starting to give migrant seafood workers a greater voice in Thailand and across Southeast Asia – enabling them to combat the subpar working conditions that persist on fishing vessels and in seafood processing facilities.

Organizing hasn’t been easy, according to a new report published by the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF), an advocacy organization. The migrant workers that fill most of the low-wage, low-skill jobs in the Thai seafood industry are legally barred from forming labor unions in Thailand.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Seafood Market Craters After Restaurants Shuttered Worldwide

April 16, 2020 — Just one kilogram of freshly caught squid a day was almost enough to live on for Thai fishermen like Wisut Boonnak. Now the catch has halved in price and he’s spending more time on village duties.

“It’s the biggest price drop that I can remember,” said Wisut, who’s been fishing for the past 40 years off the southern Thai coast. “There are fewer buyers around now because exports are lower.” Wisut used to go to sea daily to catch squid and mackerel. These days he’s out just once or twice a week.

The global seafood industry, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, is seeing demand crater. From lobster fishermen in North America to salmon farmers in Norway and shrimp producers in Vietnam, people are hurting as the coronavirus shuts cafes and restaurants and wreaks havoc with supply chains. Whether farmed or wild, fresh or processed, few areas have escaped the impact.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

Warmest Oceans Ever Force Tuna Titan to Start Protecting Fish

March 24, 2020 — Helping the canned tuna industry cope with climate change tops an already lengthy to-do list for Darian McBain, chief sustainability officer at the Thailand company that owns the Chicken of the Sea and John West brands.

In a business long accused by activists of abusing workers and killing dolphins, McBain’s responsibilities at Thai Union Group Pcl typically focused on improving labor rights in the supply chain and reducing the abandoned fishing gear on the high seas.

“Climate change hasn’t been the No. 1 topic,” she said. “Now, the climate emergency has to be a lot stronger part of the dialogue.”

The industry hasn’t yet confronted the magnitude of the problem, McBain said.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

ILO finds improvements in Thailand’s seafood sector

March 13, 2020 — A new report released in March by the United Nations’ International Labor Organization (ILO) has found improvements in working conditions in Thailand’s fishing and seafood processing sectors. However, there remain problems with forced labor in the industry, the organization noted.

Despite the finding, a group of human rights-focused NGOs are calling on the U.S. government to downgrade Thailand in its annual report on human trafficking, according to Reuters.

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

International seafood buyers urge Thailand to stand strong on fisheries reforms

February 11, 2020 — Several retailers and buyers sourcing seafood from Thailand have called on the Southeast Asian nation to preserve major regulations in the fisheries sector amidst fears that recently-made reforms may be rolled back.

In an open letter posted on the website of the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) last week, the buyers said they “urge the Royal Thai government to continue the path of reform and work constructively with national actors to achieve a transition towards a legal, ethical and sustainable fishing sector.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

How Thai Union rapidly pivoted to a greener business strategy

January 21, 2020 — Back in 2015, Thai Union had run into choppy waters. The multi-billion dollar seafood giant behind global tinned fish brands John West in the United Kingdom, Chicken of the Sea in the United States and King Oscar in Norway, among many others, had a PR shipwreck in its sights, and needed to shift coordinates swiftly.

Exposés in the New York Times, Associated Press and The Guardian had laid bare human rights abuses, forced labor and environmentally destructive fishing methods in Asian supply chains for canned seafood and prawns that ended up in U.K. supermarkets, placing Thai Union — one of the biggest producers in the world — firmly in the media and campaigner firing line.

Greenpeace didn’t mince its words, calling on consumers and investors to boycott the company, accusing it of “sacrificing the world’s oceans” and “destructive, wasteful fishing practices from its supply chains.”

“For far too long Thai Union Group has passed the blame onto others and hidden behind ineffective policies,” Greenpeace campaigner Graham Forbes said at the time. “Until this industry giant takes responsibility and demonstrates real leadership, we will work to ensure that every single customer knows it’s not just tuna that comes with buying one of its tainted brands.”

Read the full story at GreenBiz

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

Tuna fleets to hold crisis meeting as skipjack prices drop to record low

November 8, 2019 — Some of the world’s biggest tuna fishing fleets are set to meet “face to face” next week to discuss the current market crisis.

An oversupply of skipjack tuna has led raw material prices for delivery in Bangkok, Thailand to dive from $1,600 per metric ton in March to $900/t this month, a record low. This has caused many purse seine boats around the world to operate at a loss. Prices are expected to drop even further in the near future -with rumours of some exchanges done at $850/t in recent days- a situation that is seen as unsustainable for most tuna fleets.

The World Tuna Purse Seine Organization (WTPO) will hold a meeting on Nov. 13 in Manila, the Philippines, to discuss the market and catch situations in relation to “concerns” raised by WCPO and Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission members.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News