Illegal fishing and human rights issues in supply chains are familiar issues to most seafood companies.
Both issues have garnered media coverage and governmental attention, and NGO communications and reports often unveil instances of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU) and hotspots where both IUU and labor abuse are likely to occur. Those reports often cover the potential economic and reputational costs the seafood industry faces by being associated with them and the environmental costs to the ocean letting them persist can cause.
While the information highlights the problem, the challenge for seafood companies is the information often does not help operationalize responses or preventative measures they can use to address these challenges in their supply chains, leaving companies to come up with solutions on their own.
The Fisheries Governance Project (FGP) said it is working to give companies some of those solutions. FGP is working to create a collaboration focused on three factors that can play a key role in improving governance of environmental sustainability and labor rights in marine fisheries: international treaties, accountability and fisher organizing, and market compliance.
“Labor rights abuses and IUU fishing share similar root causes, yet ongoing efforts to address them often happen in siloes. FGP was created to advance solutions that focus on those interconnected governance issues,” Fisheries Governance Project Collaboration Lead Meredith Lopuch said.
At the end of last year, FGP released a consolidated set of environmental and labor rights duties to help seafood companies understand their corporate responsibilities and provide a roadmap to operationalize them. The set of duties focuses on what seafood companies must do throughout their operations to identify, prevent, and address labor rights abuse and IUU fishing in their seafood supply chains.
The collaboration spent two years analyzing over a dozen demand sets from civil society organizations, such as environmental NGOs, labor organizations, worker led organizations, and unions, that address environmental and human rights issues in the seafood industry. FGP’s research and analysis also included reviewing industry practices, consulting international norms, and vetting drafts of the corporate duties document with industry players, national and global trade unions, and NGOs.
The result is a document created to help the growing number of corporate actors who are exploring ways to fulfill their responsibility to meet established international norms aimed at preventing labor rights abuse and IUU fishing, according to FGP. The document breaks out the distinct roles of different supply chain actors – retailers, buyers, vessel owners, processors, and recruitment agencies.
The document also recognizes the importance of the industry engaging and supporting the role of the respective governments they work with and identifies actions companies can take to support the advancement of effective laws, regulations, and protections for fishers and fisheries and how to better engage with fisher associations and trade unions. It provides specific references to key treaties and other guidance for responsible supply chain policies to design corporate due diligence specifically designed for the seafood industry.
“For the last few years, a growing number of industry players have been exploring ways to address labor rights abuse and IUU fishing in their seafood supply chains," said Ella Frankel, senior advisor for Food, Farming, and Fisheries with the Ethical Trading Initiative. “We finally have a consolidated set of outcome-based actions that can help companies address both interconnected issues at the same time.”
The corporate duties have been organized into four areas of responsibility:
- Fishing vessel transparency: Ensure all supplying vessels are known and disclosed, which is a prerequisite to checking legal compliance on fishing practices, fishing methods used, and knowing who is employed and how they were recruited.
- Supply chain traceability: Ensure information required to undertake risk assessment and due diligence is collected and used by all actors in the supply chain.
- Labor rights: Ensure fundamental labor rights are respected throughout the supply chain, following the fundamental conventions of the ILO, Convention 188 on Work in Fishing, and all other relevant ILO Conventions and Guidance.
- Working conditions: Ensure contracts, communications, and working conditions are structured to ensure fishers’ rights and access to remedy.
“Seafood companies that are pursuing more environmentally and socially sustainable practices are overwhelmed by an ever-growing list of asks. To be clear, it is each company’s corporate duty to take action to identify, prevent, and address labor rights abuses and IUU fishing – which is why this consolidated set of duties, rather than asks, can streamline efforts to fulfill those duties,” Huw Thomas, founder of 3 Pillars Seafood Limited, which provides supply chain advice to seafood processors, said.
The framework has already been endorsed by a growing list of organizations with expertise in this area including the Accountability Research Center, Corporate Accountability Lab, Environmental Justice Foundation, Ethical Trading Initiative, Global Labor Justice, Greenpeace USA, Humanity Resources Consultancy, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, International Corporate Accountability Roundtable, International Transport Workers’ Federation, Oxfam America, The Solidarity Center, and the Union of Indonesian Migrant Workers (SBMI).
FGP will be hosting a session at the 2026 Seafood Expo North America (SENA) on this topic with speakers from Accountability Research Center at American University and Blue Sanctuaries. The session, "Defining Corporate Duties in Seafood Supply Chains to Prevent IUU Fishing and Labor Rights Abuse on Industrial Fishing Vessels," is running Sunday, 15 March, from 3 to 4 p.m. in Room 156A.
