A rusting, unusable boat, abandoned at sea. Its crew left to fend for themselves 70 nautical miles off the coast of Guinea, west Africa, without radio or safety equipment, abandoned by the boat’s operator.
This is just one shocking story of a global fishing industry that is rife with incidents of abuse, murder and slavery. Human rights exploitation in the seafood sector is a tragedy that has been documented for a decade.
The abandoned boat story dates back to 2006; while a UN survey (pdf) dating back to 2009 found that nearly two-thirds of migrants aboard Thai fishing boats reported seeing a fellow worker murdered. In a few, fortunate cases, people have been rescued, such as the Burmese crewmen found enslaved in cages in Indonesia last year.
This human crisis at the heart of the seafood sector was the topic of a seminar discussion, hosted by the Guardian and supported by Seafish, a non-departmental government body. A panel of experts was chaired by Guardian journalist Annie Kelly.
Boycotting slavery
For Thailand, the issue became more acute last year, when the EU threatened it with a trade ban on seafood imports if it did not tackle illegal fishing and labour abuses. An EU-wide ban could cost the country $1bn (£780m) a year in lost trade. Companies and retailers linked to slavery via their supply chains, including Tesco, Aldi, Iceland and the Co-op, have also been under pressure to boycott the country’s exports.
“I have never witnessed anything remotely like what was going on in Thailand – in case after case you were talking violent abuse and murder,” said Steve Trent, co-founder of the Environmental Justice Foundation. “These were not isolated cases. It was institutionalised in the seafood sector.” He blames the scale of the problem on a poor culture of enforcement in Thailand and the inherent vulnerability of its seafood workforce; 90% are migrants, many of whom have been trafficked into the country.
Thai Union, the world’s biggest tuna exporter and owner of the John West brand, is one of the brands alleged to have benefited from the use of labour. It claims to have terminated relationships with 17 suppliers as a result of forced labour or human trafficking violations since the start of 2015. But the company’s sustainability director, Darian McBain, said boycotting Thailand would achieve little. “Companies might say they’ll just source from another country that has no slavery in their supply chain, but I’d like to know what that country is. This is an issue that occurs across the fishing industry worldwide.”
By staying put in Thailand, companies can have more impact, said Libby Woodhatch, head of advocacy at Seafish. “[Companies] have the buying power collectively to make a difference and ensure [slavery] isn’t acceptable and that regulations are enforced,” she said.
Threat of lawsuits
Since the publication of damning investigations by the Guardian and Associated Press, multinationals, including Nestlé and Thai Union, have openly admitted to problems with slave labour and human rights abuse in their supply chains. McBain sees little benefit to this transparency. “There are a lot of companies you have never heard of that are dealing with seafood. That isn’t to say they are being more transparent with their supply chains or investing more into them, it’s just that you’ve never heard of them,” she said. “Some of the US legislation like the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act actually makes you more cautious about what you say about what you find in your supply chain, rather than encouraging transparent dialogue.”
Yuki Lo (@yukilo)
Great panel on slavery in seafood industry "it seems we care more about the fish than the fishermen" #slaveryevent pic.twitter.com/MrRdBqgYmu
September 15, 2016
For Chandran, it is not media coverage that companies should worry about but legal action from individual victims of slavery or human rights abuses. While the Modern Day Slavery Act in the UK does not provide for civil remedies for those who have been abused, she said it could be possible under international law.
In the US, cases against Nestlé and Costco have failed. But an ongoing lawsuit brought on behalf of Cambodian fishermen recruited to work in the Thai seafood industry and filed against four companies, including alleged suppliers to Walmart, could set a successful precedent. “There is a momentum towards litigation because as human rights lawyers we are looking at the abused and ways to have their voices heard that say stop this,” said Chandran.
One of the main obstacles at present is the defenselessness of workers in the seafood sector, particularly those working on boats. “This is an incredibly vulnerable community of victims ... out at sea, remote. Unless there is a system that enables victims to feel safe and encouraged to come forward and give evidence there is going to be a big gap in bringing companies to account,” said Chandran.
Response from industry
While much of the focus has been on Thailand as a major supplier of seafood to Europe and the US, Trent pointed out that you could also find human rights abuses on an individual scale in the UK, France or Spain. In response, Seafish has added human rights clauses to its certification scheme for fishermen. Backed by third-party checks, the updated Responsible Fishing Scheme (RFS) aims to give fishermen and boat operators a chance to prove they are not exploiting or endangering crews, as well as adhering to sustainable catching methods, Woodhatch said.
A number of UK retailers, including Marks & Spencer, have made commitments to ensure all their suppliers are RFS certified. However, a former fishing industry auditor in the audience criticised the scheme for interviewing only the captain as part of the auditing process, rather than speaking to ordinary crew members. Trent agreed, “It makes no sense. They are the fishermen catching the fish. They are completely outside all these schemes”. Woodhatch said they wanted to incorporate crew interviews into future revisions of the scheme.
Chandran also pointed out that as the scheme was voluntary and did not yet cover non-UK boats, its impact on the wider global problem of human rights abuse in the seafood sector was limited. To get that global impact in Asia, Africa and Europe, individual companies need to be accountable under UK laws, she said. “If a British company is able to establish itself in an industry where there is an absence of rights for workers, then it’s a necessity to ensure there is protection for the workers.”
McBain and Woodhatch agreed that this is a difficult task for seafood companies, especially when they source fish on a daily basis from multiple boats. Chandran said the most obvious solution is to work with competitors to check on suppliers or shorten the supply chain. Trent concurred: “The more companies only source from people they have reasonable degrees of surety [about] the more it squeezes out the dark side. You can’t switch to a situation where you have no slavery or abuse tomorrow, but you can push very hard.”
Helen McTaggart (@helenmctaggart)At @GuardianSustBiz #slaveryevent @ejfoundation calls on biz to show l'ship in slavery + fish. M&S set out public target on @SeafishRFS
September 15, 2016
For Thai Union those first steps have seen it end the use of employment brokers to source workers for its seafood processing plants. This was to stop workers being indebted to brokers (bonded labour) – but it does not apply to workers on fishing boats.
Beyond companies changing their policies, Chandran and Trent said there needed to be laws to protect worker rights and allow them to unionise. Both of these steps would undoubtedly come at the cost of cheap seafood.
McBain pointed out that at least one retailer promises to bring prices down every year. “If prices are going down each year, where is the money for the workers and the living wage at every point along that supply chain?” The answer, said Woodhatch, was that retailers had to take the decision out of consumers’ hands and ensure they don’t sell seafood produced using slave labour. “The consumer is hit with so much information about what they should and shouldn’t eat. When they go into the supermarket they are just trying to decide what to eat for dinner. The retailer must make those decisions and have standards.”
The panel
Chair: Annie Kelly, Guardian Global Development
Parosha Chandran, human rights barrister and UN expert on trafficking
Libby Woodhatch, head of advocacy at Seafish
Darian McBain, sustainability director at Thai Union
Steve Trent, founder of the Environmental Justice Foundation
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