The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Ending Illegal Fishing Project has published a new fact sheet designed to give seafood retailers, processors, and buyers a blueprint for mitigating illegal catches in their supply chains.
The fact sheet, “Casting a Safety Net on the Seafood Industry,” gives a list of five questions that can be asked to promote due diligence toward keeping IUU products out of a supply chain, including:
- Can each vessel be uniquely identified?
- How can I be sure where vessels are operating?
- How do I know if landings are subject to stringent port controls?
- Can I follow the fish from “hook to shore”?
- Are people provided safe working conditions?
Pew’s fact sheet provides background for why these questions are important for seafood retailers and buyers to ask, and offers suggested methods for researching a given supply chain.
“Illegal fishers cheat coastal communities that depend on healthy fish populations, deceive consumers who trust that the fish they purchase comes through legal supply chains, skew scientific stock assessments that rely on accurate reporting, and undermine law-abiding fishers who play by the rules,” the nonprofit said in its release. “Implementing policies to require traceability of fish, people, and vessels from catch to landing would minimize the loopholes that some operators use to exploit the oceans and the people who depend upon them.”
