The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program launched the Seafood Slavery Risk Tool, the first solution of its kind to help businesses assess the potential risk of forced labor, human trafficking, and hazardous child labor in fisheries.
The Seafood Slavery Risk Tool – originally created with Liberty Asia, Seafish and the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) and now jointly run by the aquarium with Liberty Asia and SFP – produces a rating indicating the likelihood that human trafficking, forced labor and hazardous child labor are occurring on fishing boats in a specific fishery.
“The new Risk Tool developed by Seafood Watch and our partners will give major businesses insight into the possibility of human rights abuses in their supply chains. They can then work with suppliers to correct problems, toward the goal of achieving a seafood supply that’s sustainable for both the ocean and the people whose livelihoods depend on fishing and seafood processing jobs,” said Monterey Bay Aquarium Executive Director Julie Packard.
The tool also encourages businesses to engage directly with suppliers to correct abuses. Available at no cost to interested businesses, it rates the likelihood that forced labor, human trafficking or hazardous child labor is occurring on fishing boats in a specific fishery. A fishery could be rated as critical, high, moderate, or low risk for these human rights abuses.
The ratings are derived from credible, publicly available sources, including reports by authoritative institutions (e.g., U.S. government agencies, the European Union and the United Nations) and civil society organizations (universities, NGOs and media outlets). All these data are available in the public domain. The tool is available here.
The tool was developed over the course of two years, in a process that included extensive peer review by businesses and human rights organizations, including the ILO, the US Department of Labor, US State Department, Fair Trade USA, FishWise, Winrock, Greenpeace, Slave Free Seas, USAID, and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Human rights abuses in the seafood industry are an endemic and ongoing problem,” said Sustainable Fisheries Partnership CEO and founder Jim Cannon. “We’re proud to be involved with the development of what we believe will be a valuable tool for the industry to help prevent these kinds of abuses from occurring.”
In early 2018, environmental organisation WWF and its partners also introduced a revolutionary blockchain technology to the Pacific Islands’ tuna industry, the first of its kind for this region, to help stamp out illegal fishing and human rights abuses. Tracking fish from vessel to the supermarket, the Blockchain Supply Chain Traceability Project is using digital technology in the fresh and frozen tuna sectors of the Western and Central Pacific region to strengthen supply chain management.
