Human Rights At Sea (HRAS) informs that London-based MarinTrust, which is dedicated to marine ingredient production factories, has responded to Human Rights at Sea’s Certification, Standards and Ratings Questionnaire 1.0. HRAS welcomes the detailed response, which outlines the ways in which MarinTrust and its registered Certification Bodies (CBs)1 record and respond to human, social and labour rights abuses.
As explained, in a welcome example of proactive engagement with Human Rights at Sea (HRAS), MarinTrust has issued a formal response to HRAS’s Review Questionnaire. This comes one day after the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch issued its own response to the broader HRAS report v1.1 dated 6 March 2023.
MarinTrust reports that ‘to date, no reports via the CB, or directly, have been received regarding human rights abuses.’ However, it then assures that ‘systems are in place to deal with them if they are raised,’ including immediate withdrawal if critical nonconformities are uncovered.
HRAS welcomes this information but notes that a lack of reported incidents is not a clean bill of health.
Libby Woodhatch, Executive Chair of the MarinTrust Governing Body said: “We welcome this questionnaire as an opportunity for standards to continuously improve and demonstrate improvement. With the upcoming Version 3 of our Factory standard, to be launched later this year, we will be extending our scope and enhancing human rights criteria.
We believe the questionnaire also contributes to helping all our stakeholders better understand what the MarinTrust standard stands for, i.e., a third-party business to business standard with the marine ingredients production factory as its unit of certification – not a fishery standard
HRAS particularly welcomes MarinTrust’s publicly available listing of organisations that have had their certificates suspended or withdrawn. This is vital for transparency and relatively unusual amongst scheme owners.
HRAS will continue to engage with MarinTrust to understand their processes and policies in a transparent and fair manner, whilst finalising Version 2.0 of the Certification, Standards and Ratings Review.
Key Questions by HRAS regarding the protection of human and labour rights
With the following questions, HRAS is seeking engagement with as part of its ongoing public reporting on the issues first raised in a recent report.
- How many cases of reported child labour, forced or compulsory labour have been reported to your organisation under your certification since inception, how reported and by whom?
- How many cases of human rights abuse have been reported to your organisation under your certification since inception, how reported and by whom?
- What is the structure, methodology and oversight mechanism(s) for your organisation’s internal investigation, findings and remediation processes involving reported cases for i) human rights abuses, ii) labour rights abuses and specifically, iii) child labour or iv) forced or compulsory labour abuses?
- How many entities have you suspended for i) human rights abuses, ii) labour rights abuses and specifically, iii) child labour or iv) forced or compulsory labour abuses since inception?
- What are the details of the suspension, for how long was the suspension upheld,
were the perpetrators identified and are these details publicly available? - Please confirm public access and links.
- What are the details of the suspension, for how long was the suspension upheld,
- How many suspended entities have been re-certified, under what circumstances were they allowed to reapply and on what basis were they re-assessed for certification?
- How many entities have you banned for i) human rights abuses, ii) labour rights abuses and specifically, iii) child labour or iv) forced or compulsory labour abuses since inception?
- What were the details of the ban, were the perpetrators identified and are these details publicly available?
- Please confirm public access and links.
