While U.K. seafood advocacy organization Seafish’s Responsible Fishing Scheme (RFS) industry standards have been in place for years, they were recently revised to include safety, health and welfare as core principles.
“We began addressing sustainability 10 to 12 years ago, focusing on the fish, while the labor rights issues were overlooked. This is now a key area where the supply-chain needs robust evidence through an independent third-party audit to prove that they are sourcing responsibly and meeting social and ethical criteria,” Libby Woodhatch, head of advocacy at Seafish, told SeafoodSource.
Woodhatch is one of the panelists on the “Preventing Human Rights Abuses in the Seafood Supply Chain” panel at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit, 9-11 February in New Orleans, La., USA.
For the first time, the RFS is being modified to attain ISO 17065 accreditation status, making it the only global standard that audits compliance onboard fishing vessels, including ethical and welfare criteria.
Seafish has been working on social responsibility language for RFS for around a year, assisted by key NGOs, but last year’s The Guardian articles heightened the need for ethical standards, according to Woodhatch.
“The articles focused on vessels that catch the fish made into feed, which is fed to farmed shrimp, which is then exported, predominantly to the U.S. and Europe,” she said. “As we cannot expect vessels in these fisheries to meet the RFS standard in the immediate term, we are developing an RFS Improver’s Program, to enable developing regions to establish a measurable approach to demonstrating responsible catching practices and improving crew welfare on fishing vessels via FIPs.”
While UK commercial vessels follow a code of conduct for employing migrant labor, third-party certification is vital “if they want to prove their responsibility and satisfy the social and ethical criteria now stipulated by the markets they supply,” Woodhatch added.
Trial audits of UK commercial fishing vessels will begin in April.
As well as taking part in the panel, Seafish will host a reception for delegates at the Summit to showcase RFS and its new responsible sourcing tool Risk Assessment for Sourcing Seafood (RASS). The free online platform gives UK seafood buyers greater clarity over the environmental performance of wild-caught seafood, according to Seafish.
After a soft launch in September, RASS now includes environmental information on around 100 different species. Around 20 retailers, foodservice buyers and suppliers are utilizing RASS in the first phase. “It’s not a ‘fish to avoid’ guide,” Woodhatch said. “Instead, it is providing seafood buyers with robust information on environmental risks when buying seafood.”
Seafish believes this type of practical, business-to-business buying guide is needed. “Some of the scoring systems that NGOs are providing are very black and white, advising ‘don’t eat it’ or ‘do it eat it.’ When you drill down within each fishery, some [fishing vessels] are going above and beyond,” Woodhatch said. “It’s about making an informed choice; it is not about telling people what they should and shouldn’t be buying.”
