This is part one of a two-part series detailing human rights violations in the tuna industry. Part two explores BLOOM's calls to the industry and government for action.
Debt bondage, passport confiscation, as well as physical, sexual, and verbal abuse are just a few human rights violations that tuna companies are failing to address on their fishing vessels and in processing plants contributing to their supply chains, according to a new report.
BLOOM, a nonprofit headquartered in Paris, France, with the mission of preserving marine environments and supporting social justice in the fishing sector, published a report earlier this summer titled “Canned Brutality: Human rights abuses in the tuna industry.”
The report, completed in partnership with Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, details how many tuna products appearing on European shelves stem from supply chains that feature workers on fishing vessels and in processing plants who are subjected to verbal, physical, and sexual abuse, forced labor, and discrimination, as well as alleged instances of child abuse, among other rights infringements.
“Today, it is indeed difficult for consumers to ensure that the tuna they consume is environmentally and socially sustainable, especially if it comes from certain regions or if it is caught using certain techniques, such as seine fishing under fish aggregation devices. What we can suggest is to diversify the fish one consumes, preferring the consumption of local species, fished and marketed in local circuits and employing small artisanal fishermen and not large industrial vessels,” BLOOM Campaign Head Alessandro Manzotti said.
The report covered the tuna sector in the Pacific and Indian oceans, focusing on abuses that occurred in the Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand. Though these issues are not unique to Southeast Asia, some of the biggest tuna firms are based in Taiwan and Thailand, Manzotti said.
“What we want to emphasize with our report is that abusive practices are still too widespread and the industry is not making enough effort to put an end to them,” Manzotti said. “As long as the large commercial players in the industry are not made fully accountable to the law for the practices that take place in their supply chain, they will not have the motivation to engage in a reform of their commercial and supply policies.”
Tuna are highly migratory fish, and many tuna vessels remain isolated for long periods of time in remote areas of the ocean, allowing worker abuse to occur with little to no oversight. The abuse can take the form of lack of safety equipment in hazardous conditions, denial of medication, excessive work of up to 20 hours a day, and lack of access to food and clean water.
Some tuna vessels employ a form of abuse known as debt bondage, a common practice in which workers must work off exorbitant recruitment fees before receiving payment, according to BLOOM.
“It all boils down to the economic model on which industrial tuna fishing is based. Needing to maximize yields and, consequently, catches, in order to remain competitive, players in the sector have embarked on a race for intensive fishing that is decimating stocks,” Manzotti said. “Faced with the depletion of the resource, forced to fish farther and farther away, keeping fishing boats as long as possible and at the lowest cost, fishing actors are incentivized to use practices such as … the use of underpaid labor.”
Migrant workers are subject to trafficking, as boat captains or labor brokers often confiscate their visas and passports. Migrants also face issues with translation and contracts in unknown language, and can be unwillingly ignorant of their rights and channels through which they can report abuse.
In 2020, the Environmental Justice Foundation revealed that 92 percent of 62 studied vessels had withheld wages, 82 percent were guilty of extracting excessive overtime, 34 percent of the vessels’ fishers suffered verbal abuse, and 24 percent of the vessels’ fishers endured physical abuse.
According to the report, transshipment – when fishing vessels transfer catch from their boats to carrier vessels that also refuel and resupply the fishing vessels – exacerbates the abuse by extending the time at sea for fishing vessels, thereby ensuring oversight remains nearly nonexistent.
“Full legal accountability of the tuna sector for their supply chain is the main instrument that will allow an improvement on the subject of labor rights, as well as on the subject of environmental issues,” Manzotti said. “Making the supply chain truly and compulsorily transparent would oblige these companies to improve their sourcing policies, at the cost of a loss of credibility in front of their consumers.”
At-sea workers are not alone in suffering this abuse. Women comprise 90 percent of land-based seafood processing facility labor in the areas studied and often work under hazardous conditions, enduring sexual harassment and violence, discrimination, and more.
Despite lingering issues, some companies with abuse occurring throughout their supply chains often display sustainability seals on their products, misleading consumers and failing to address and protect workers against abuse, according to BLOOM. The organization pointed to Bumble Bee Foods’ settlement of a lawsuit in March 2023 requiring the company to remove all references to fair working practices for the next 10 years from marking materials due to reports that supply chain workers endured 34-hour shifts, inadequate sleep, and withholding of wages, resulting in illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing practices.
“As written in our report and as confirmed by other NGOs, these labels insufficiently consider human rights issues in their certification processes. Unfortunately, consumers are misled to believe that these labels are a guarantee of an environmentally and worker-friendly product, and at BLOOM, we rightly work to create awareness of these shortcomings,” Manzotti said.
Human Rights at Sea (HRAS), a registered charity in England and Wales advocating for human rights in the seafood industry, reported this year that almost all certification schemes for “sustainable” fishing did not account for human rights sufficiently and that half exclude that criterium from the certification process.
BLOOM’s report found several tuna companies continue to source from vessels known for abuses and provide misleading information to suppliers.
Photo courtesy of BLOOM
